Scientific divulgation, in particular in Physics, seems to be in troubles, say in Poland, to less extent
in Italy, maybe even less in some other places. However, it became, compared
to Faraday’s times, quite a difficult task.
On the bottom of the pyramid, we have numerous journals, in particular so called „scientific divulgation”, usually monthly
journal, full of colourful photos (and publicity), but explaining that the
physical world is made of 11 dimensions, out-of
which six are hidden and one is turned-around; that the vacuum is populated
by ghosts of Higgs bosons; that other, mirror worlds exist in parallel and who is unhappy
here, could by lucky there...
On a higher level are nice divulgation books,
on the elementary level, we quote one:
Moderne Physik, by E. Üebelacker, Tessloff Verlag, Nürnberg, 2000
These books, and good TV programmes, explain that there was a Big Bang and that some quarks
exists.
(What in German means „cheese”, probably coming from East-Germany
Slavian language, captured by J.Joyce during his visit in Berlin ?).
But when we ask even a PhD student in Physics, how
many quarks exist, which are their „colours”,
and what are their masses, almost everybody,
apart specialists, is in trouble. Seems that the knowledges stops at the elementary level.
The point is that:
1) the colours are not determinable, as they change in continuation
2) masses are known with almost 50% error bar, for the lightest quarks
3) these masses are only a small part of the total mass of a proton or neutron
(which comes from relativistic effects)
4) pictures like this above do not say anything on the electric charge,
spin, mass of quarks.
On the other hand, hundreds of scientists, contribute every year to precise
reviews of quark properties.
Several orders of magnitude more expensive are the very experimental studies
of these quarks.
So a question arises, even by Nobel prices winner like L. Ledermann
„do we really need to know Higgs boson mass?”.
Is a „man in the street” really bothered by this question, hardly able to
distinguish between real objects, experimentally verified like quarks and
anti-super-quarks of anti-parallel worlds?
So we find useful to construct some TRACKS
of MODERN PHYSICS – for example starting form 5 weeks W. Röntgen
passed in the laboratory more than one hundreds years ago, through photos
of first X-ray machines , through the discovery of DNA structure thanks to X-rays, to modern their applications, like
protein studies or visualisation of d-electron orbitals in copper oxides .
The material available is simply enormous, the difficulty stays in choosing
„key” points, enough simple to be understood but enough scientifically „rigid”
not to offend specialists.
The present page is a result of a real exhibition, held during XXXVIII National Congress of Polish Physical Society in Gdansk
in September 2003, where short texts served
as introduction to piles of scientific reprints and simple objects, like spinning tips were used to illustrate
complex machine, like Paul magnetic traps for Bose-Einstein condensation.
The present pages are to be considered as „demo” version
– an invitation for other contributions
