List of Experiments - Physics

Physics

  • Eratosthenes evaluates the diameter of the Earth by comparing the length of the shortest shadow of the day with the distance between that location and a place where the sun shines to the bottom of the well at midday (240 BC)
  • Galileo Galilei uses rolling balls to disprove the Aristotelian theory of motion (1602–1607)
  • Otto von Guericke demonstrates atmospheric pressure using Magdeburg hemispheres (1654)
  • Robert Boyle shows that the volume of a given amount of gas is inversely related to the pressure upon it (1660)
  • Benjamin Franklin in 1747 describes experiments demonstrating negative and positive electrical charge, and in his 1752 kite experiment shows that lightning is a form of electrical discharge.
  • Alessandro Volta constructs a new source of electricity, the electrical battery (1796)
  • Henry Cavendish's torsion bar experiment measures the force of gravity in a laboratory (1798)
  • Thomas Young shows that light is a wave in his double-slit experiment (c. 1805), extended in the 20th century to show it is a particle at the same time
  • Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the connection of electricity and magnetism by experiments involving a compass and electric circuits (1820)
  • Michael Faraday discovers magnetic induction in an experiment with a closed ring of soft iron, with two windings of wire (1831)
  • James Prescott Joule demonstrates the mechanical equivalent of heat, an important step in the development of thermodynamics (1834)
  • Christian Doppler arranges to have trumpets played from a passing train. The ground-observed pitch was higher than that played when the train was approaching then lower than that played as the train passed and moved away, demonstrating the Doppler effect (1845)
  • Léon Foucault's namesake Foucault pendulum is first exhibited. It demonstrates the Coriolis effect and the rotation of the Earth (1851)
  • Edwin Hall discovers a voltage across a conductor with a transverse applied magnetic field, the Hall effect (1879)
  • Michelson-Morley experiment exposes weaknesses of the prevailing variant of the theory of luminiferous aether (1887)
  • Heinrich Hertz demonstrates free space electromagnetic waves, predicted by Maxwell's equations, with a simple dipole antenna and spark gap oscillator (1887)
  • Guglielmo Marconi demonstrates that radio signals can travel between two points separated by an obstacle. Marconi's servant is behind a hill 3 kilometers away and fires his rifle upon receiving the signals (1895).
  • J. J. Thomson's cathode ray tube experiments (discovers the electron and its negative charge) (1897)
  • Loránd Eötvös publishes the result of the second series of experiments, clearly demonstrating that inertial and gravitational mass are one and the same. (1909)
  • Robert Millikan's oil-drop experiment, which suggests that electric charge occurs as quanta (whole units), (1909)
  • Heike Kamerlingh Onnes demonstrates superconductivity (1911)
  • Ernest Rutherford's gold foil experiment demonstrated that the positive charge and mass of an atom is concentrated in a small, central atomic nucleus, disproving the then-popular plum pudding model of the atom (1911)
  • Arthur Eddington leads an expedition to the island of Principe to observe a total solar eclipse (gravitational lensing). This allows for an observation of the bending of starlight under gravity, a prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. It was confirmed (although it was later shown that the margin of error was as great as the observed bending) (1919)
  • Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach conduct the Stern-Gerlach experiment, which demonstrates particle spin (1920)
  • Enrico Fermi splits the atom (1934, although the results were not fully understood until 1939, by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann)
  • Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd build the first critical nuclear reactor (1942)
  • John Bardeen and Walter Brattain fabricate the first working transistor (1947)
  • Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines confirm the existence of the neutrino in the neutrino experiment (1955)
  • The Scout rocket experiment confirms the time dilation effect of gravity. (1976)
  • Alain Aspect performs the Bell test experiments in the 1980s.
  • Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman synthesize Bose-Einstein condensate at the University of Colorado at Boulder (1995)
  • Cockcroft-Walton generator

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