Officially, the date beginning the Modern Physics is
Planck's lecture in Berlin in December 1900, in which "quants" of energy are nominated for the first
time. Quants created new Physics areas, like quantum mechanics and electrodynamics
and changed our view, not only on Physics but on the Philosophy of Knowledge,
bringing also new revolutionary applications, like lasers.
However, giving any date is a simplification. Already in sixties of the XIX century electron beams (“cathodic rays”) were produced while as a official date of the "discovery" of electron Thompson's article written in 1897 is taken. Beginning of the XX century established the idea of atom (also through Einstein's paper about Brown's motions and Perrin's works) but by the end of XIX century the indivisibility of atom was "mined" by Mrs and Mr Curie works.
Physics cataloguing is also an oversimplification, especially in Modern Physics. Mass spectrometry was used to measure atom masses and for the discovery of isotopes. Today, it is widely used in food quality validation. Quarks and gluons, neutron stars and black holes are all fascinating, but no less fascinating is biophysics and geophysics. And finally solid state physics, persistently digging under the main stream of the discoveries, but without which also this (virtual) exhibition would not be possible.
On the exhibition we show:
- how new divisions of the science arises (5 weeks in 1897 spend by Röntgen in his laboratory),
- how they develop (first medical equipment)
- finally how they maturate, flourishing into completely new applications, outside of Physics, like studies of DNA or proteins structure explanation (see. “super-poison”).
We show, that Science was created by normal peoples: Planck, university professor, who hastily looking for a correct mathematic function describing experimental data, to correct his own error; Bohr, a young doctorate, who did not hesitate to propose apparently irrational explanations; Einstein, which showed his genious only when he found a job and founded his own, happy family (“Albert and Mileva”).
At the end, we show that Science in itself is alive - full of mistakes, dead-end streets but also new solutions and that it is created every day - what we wrote yesterday, today is out of date.
The present exhibition is an invitation,
for young people, not only to Physics, but to Science in general.
That Science is, at the final end, engine of the
development!