Reading:
Gregory, Chapter 27, to p. 576, pp. 581 to end
- Erazim Kohak, “A Philosophy of Personalism” (coursepack)
- Steven Weinberg, “The more comprehensible the
universe is the more pointless it seems” (online)
Online evaluations open
Final Exam
Thursday, Dec. 17 7:30am - 9:30am, NPB 1002.

•
Thursday, Dec. 17 7:30am - 9:30am, NPB 1002
, aka here
•
Comprehensive: covers entire course but with emphasis (2/3)
on material since midterm
•
Bring: ID, scratch paper (no calculator necessary). One “cheat sheet”
with formulas allowed, handwritten front and back of 1 page
•
Format: 30% mult. choice 40% short answer 30% essay (choice of 2)
• Review session 2 nd part of class Tues next week,
+ during reading week TBA

• Photoelectric effect: minimum energy required for 1 photon to remove electron from a metal ⇒ minimum frequency for photon (Einstein 1905)
• Bohr atom model (1913) accounted for Balmer spectrum
(set of discrete frequencies) of hydrogen gas
• de Broglie: a particle is a wave λ =h/p
• Schroedinger and Heisenberg (1920s) constructed general framework of quantum mechanics
• Born: wave function ψ has probabilistic interpretation:
| ψ (x,t)| is probability of finding particle at x,t
• Wave-particle duality and role of observer in measurement

1. protons and electrons both had positive charge
2. atoms did not exist
3. the proton should orbit the electron, not vice versa
4. electrons did not exist
5. the atom would collapse because the accelerating electrons would radiate energy

In the film Bronowski said that Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle was badly named. He said we should instead call it the Principle of
1. Certainty
2. Tolerance
3. Unknowability
4. Taste
5. Deviance

Michael Shüring, UF Center for European
Studies
• Worked at Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science in Berlin and the
Institute for the History of Science and
Technology at the Deutsches Museum in
Munich, and taught at the University of
California, Berkeley.

• Einstein felt there should be a way to formulate laws of nature in every kind of frame, including accelerated ones
• He began with the “Principle of Equivalence”:
“There’s no way to tell the difference between acceleration and gravity”

a
Can’t tell the
difference
Rocket far from any gravitating body (star, planet…), at rest.
Acceleration=0, no gravity
Rocket far from any gravitating body, accelerating
a = g, no gravity
Rocket at rest on
Earth a=0, gravity

t a a a
Rock falls according to you as though
It were under the influence of gravity

t
Rock thrown horizontally in frame of outside observer
How rock looks to you in rocket

t
Light shone horizontally in frame of outside observer
How light looks to you in rocket
Light bends in accelerating frame
⇒
light bends in gravitational field

Einstein theory of general relativity says any mass curves spacetime around it:
Light travels on a geodesic – the shortest
path between 2 pts. on the curved surface

th

• Henrietta Leavitt: In 1908 studied Cepheid variables – stars that oscillate in brightness.
She found intrinsic relation between brightness and period ⇒ compare stars with same period. If they are dimmer, then further away because brightness ∝ 1/r 2

• Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin: Ph.D thesis
(1925) showed that spectral lines observed in stars showed overwhelmingly evidence for hydrogen and helium, unlike Earth
• Hans Bethe 1939: shows energy of sun comes from nuclear fusion of hydrogen
E=mc 2
Mass of fusion products less than inputs

• Doppler shift (usually for sound) occurs when emmitter is moving with respect to the observer: change in apparent frequency https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4OnBYrbCjY
• Redshift is Doppler shift for light

• Edwin Hubble’s observations of remote galaxies, and the redshift of their spectral lines
(1924).
• Hubble noticed that the further away the galaxy, the greater the redshift of its spectral lines.
• This linear relationship is called
Hubble’s Law . http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect20/A9.html

• v = H
0 d
• v = recessional velocity of the galaxy
• H
0
= Hubble constant*
• d = distance of galaxy to earth
• Galaxies are getting farther apart as time progresses, therefore the universe is expanding.
Note 1/H
0
is a time –meaning?

• Expansion rate measured using Type 1A
Supernovae.
• The age of the universe can be derived from
Hubble’s constant by working backwards d → 0
• T
0
= 1 /H
0
– Current measurements H
0
= 73 km/s*Mpc, then
T
0
= 13.4 billion years old (age of universe)

• All the solutions to E’s equations which give Hubbard’s law have singularities
• Einstein thought that singularities such as these indicated that there were important physical effects not accounted for in his equations. He also thought that the right answer would involve static behavior: large-scale structure should not change with time.
• He also saw how he could “fix” the field equation to eliminate singular and dynamic solutions: introduce an additional constant term, which became known as the cosmological constant , to represent the missing, unknown, physical effects.

• The Universe is observed to be expanding; it is not static.
– Thus the real Universe may be described by one of the dynamic solutions to the original Einstein field equation.
– Thus there appeared to be no point in Einstein’s cosmological constant, so he let it drop, calling it “my greatest blunder.”
– Thereafter he began trying to show that the singularities in the dynamic solutions simply wouldn’t be realized. His effort resulted in the steady-state model of the Universe, which we’ll describe later.
• Cosmological constant, will come back, though.

• The space between galaxies expands, not the galaxies themselves
• Example: raisins in a loaf of bread.
– As the dough rises, the overall loaf of bread expands; the space between raisins increases but the raisins themselves do not expand.

• There is NO CENTER to the universe
– Expansion looks the same regardless of where you are in the universe.
– Every point appears to be the center of the expansion, therefore no point is the center.
– The universe is infinite.

• The light from remote galaxies and other objects is redshifted.
• This redshift is called cosmological redshift because it is caused by the expansion of the universe, not by the actual movement of the object (Doppler redshift).

• What was there before the big bang?
• What caused the big bang?
• Is the universe open or closed or marginal?
• What is the meaning of life?
• What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?
One of these questions will be answered on Thursday