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The conceptual differences between physics theories discussed in the 19th century and those that were most historically prominent in the first decades of the 20th century lead to a characterization of the earlier sciences as "classical physics" while the work based on quantum and relativity theories became known as "modern physics".
This timeline lists significant discoveries in physics and the laws of nature, including experimental discoveries, theoretical proposals that were confirmed experimentally, and theories that have significantly influenced current thinking in modern physics. Such discoveries are often a multi-step, multi-person process.
[10] 16th century - Domingo de Soto suggests that bodies falling through a homogeneous medium are uniformly accelerated. [11] [12] Soto, however, did not anticipate many of the qualifications and refinements contained in Galileo's theory of falling bodies. He did not, for instance, recognise, as Galileo did, that a body would fall with a ...
The discovery of these particles required very different experimental methods from that of their ordinary matter counterparts, and provided evidence that all particles had antiparticles—an idea that is fundamental to quantum field theory, the modern mathematical framework for particle physics. In the case of most subsequent particle ...
In the history of physics, the concept of fields had its origins in the 18th century in a mathematical formulation of Newton's law of universal gravitation, but it was seen as deficient as it implied action at a distance. In 1852, Michael Faraday treated the magnetic field as a physical object, reasoning about lines of force.
A golden age of physics began with the simultaneous discovery of the principle of the conservation of energy in the mid-19th century. [7] [8] A golden age of physics was the years 1925 to 1927. [9] The golden age of nonlinear physics was the period from 1950 to 1970, encompassing the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem and others. [10]
In contrast to classical physics, "modern physics" is usually used to focus on those revolutionary changes created by quantum physics and theory of relativity. [5]: 2 A physical system can be described by classical physics when it satisfies conditions such that the laws of classical physics are approximately valid.
The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta is a science book for the lay reader. Written by the physicists Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, it traces the development of ideas in physics. It was originally published in 1938 by Cambridge University Press.