Only Pakistani To Win Nobel Prize For Physics

Doctor Abdus Salam is the first and only Pakistani, so far, to receive a Nobel Prize in physics. He is also well known for the development of science and technology in his country.

For example: Salam was an advisor to the Ministry of Science in Pakistan from 1960 to 1974. He was the founding director of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO).

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Salam also played a key role in Pakistan's development of nuclear energy and contributed to the development of their atomic bomb project in 1972. Thus, he was often called the Scientific Father of Pakistan.

However, in 1974, Salam departed from his country, in protest, after the Parliament of Pakistan passed a bill declaring the members of Ahmadiya Muslim community, to which he belonged, non-Muslims.

In 1979, he won the Nobel Prize for physics alongside Sheldon Lee Glashow and Steven Weinberg, for the electroweak unification theory. Thus, after this extraordinary accomplishment, he once again became his nation's hero.

Salam continued to stay in England until his death in 1996. But, his dying wish was to be buried in his beloved nation. It was fulfilled and approximately 30,000 people attended his funeral prayers in Pakistan.

Work

In 1951, he obtained a PhD degree from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. His doctoral thesis earned him not only popularity and reputation but also an Adams Prize.

Salam then worked on the unification of electromagnetic and weak forces (from 1959 onwards) with Glashow and Weinberg.

In 1966, he proposed a hypothetical particle, when he showed the possible interaction between magnetic monopole and C-violation. He thus formulated the "magnetic photon".

In 1972, he collaborated with Indian-American physicist Jogesh Pati. They developed a theory of everything (GUT) known as the  Pati–Salam model.

How James Watt And Harry Potter Are Related

James Watt was a Scottish physicist and inventor who was born on Jan 19, 1736 and strangely has a weird connection with Harry Potter films. Well, at least that's the intention of this post.

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Just as Harry frequently has ache in the corner of his head (where he was scarred at birth), James Watt also is said to have had headaches all his life.

Watt developed the concept of horsepower, a unit to measure the rate at which work is done. In his honor, SI unit of power is called Watt and one horsepower is 746 W.

A related meme had once gone viral on the internet.

Just the way actor Daniel Radcliffe said it did the trick.

Watt was also a pioneer in steam engine technology. He improved upon the old version and developed his own machine in 1770, which radically enhanced the efficiency and cost-effectiveness and ushered the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

In Harry Potter films, the steam engine plays a crucial role as it's what drives the Hogwarts Express. It was provided by West Coast Railways, a train operating company in Lancashire.

Plus, James Watt was Scottish and Harry Potter films have been majorly filmed in Scotland. In fact, Scotland is where J.K. Rowling began writing the books.

Watt was perhaps a magician in some sense. For example, he invented the copying machine in 1780, a technology far ahead of its time, similar to modern photocopy, but with ink. He also invented a machine for copying sculptures and medallions (like 3D printing).

His experiments in chemistry yielded chemicals with great industrial applications such as with good bleaching properties.

Lily, Harry's mother, was well versed in magic; a distinguished personality who stood up to bullies like James Potter. Watt's mother, Agnes, was also forceful in character and highly educated. James Watt is said to have inherited his mother's intellect.

Summing up, it almost feels like James Watt is the inspiration for Harry Potter. In a way. Well, for physics lovers, who also happen to be Potterheads, this is just a very good news!

Who are smartest physicists according to Lev Landau?

Lev Landau was a Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist who is known for his work in quantum mechanics and superfluidity. He was born on 22 January, 1908 to highly educated Jewish parents in Azerbaijan. His father was an engineer while his mother was a doctor.

It is no surprise then that Landau was a child prodigy. He learned to differentiate as well as integrate by the time he was 13 years old. His parents thought he was too young to attend university so he had to wait for another two years.

At age 16, he was allowed to join the Leningrad State University, from where he graduated with flying colors, in 1927. After this, he travelled the entirety of Europe, met and worked alongside renowned physicists of the time such as Bohr, Dirac and Pauli.

Having known and worked with them for some time, Landau devised a genius logarithmic scale. It is a 0-5 ranking of physicists based on the amount of contributions made. He could maintain this ranking system only until his death in 1968 but it still has some of the most notable names.

Since the scale is logarithmic, rank 1 physicist contributions are ten times more (as per Landau) than people ranked 2, and so on. In other words, the higher the rank, the less valuable the physicist is.

Rank 0 Isaac Newton

Rank 0.5 Albert Einstein

Rank 1

This has a list of physicists including Niels Bohr, Satyendra Nath Bose, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg.

Rank 2.5 Lev Landau

This ranking system was so intriguing that other physicists continued it even after Landau's death. In 1965, Lev Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize. As a result, his ranking was improved to 2. After his death in 1968, he was granted an even higher ranking of 1.5.

In 2004, Russian physicist Vitaly Ginzburg ranked Richard Feynman in the 1 category. Physicist Hans Bethe was inducted alongside Landau in the 1.5 category.

Rank 3 Edward Witten

Rank 4.5 David Mermin

Rank 5 Mundane physicists

10 Discoveries By Newton That Changed The World

Isaac Newton is one of the few names that will forever be enshrined in physics history and that too with a lot of glamour associated. Contributions of none other physicist match his, well, probably Einstein's, or not even his!? The following are Newton's ten most well-known works that changed the world later on.

Laws of motion

1. An object will remain at rest or move in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

2. F=ma.

3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton's three laws of motion, along with thermodynamics, stimulated the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Much of the society built today owes to these laws.

Binomial Theorem

Around 1665, Isaac Newton discovered the Binomial Theorem, a method to expand the powers of sum of two terms. He generalized the same in 1676. The binomial theorem is used in probability theory and in the computing sciences.

Inverse square law

By using Kepler's laws of planetary motion, Newton derived the inverse square law of gravity. This means that the force of gravity between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. This law is used to launch satellites into space.

Newton's cannon

Newton was a strong supporter of Copernican Heliocentrism. This was a thought experiment by Newton to illustrate orbit or revolution of moon around earth (and hence, earth around the Sun).

He imagined a very tall mountain at the top of Earth on which a cannon is loaded. If too much gunpowder is used, then the cannonball will fly into space. If too little is used, then the ball wouldn't travel far. Just the right amount of powder will make the ball orbit the Earth.

Calculus

Newton invented the differential calculus when he was trying to figure out the problem of accelerating body. Whereas Leibniz is best-known for the creation of integral calculus. The calculus is at the foundation of higher level mathematics. Calculus is used in physics and engineering, such as to improve the architecture of buildings and bridges.

Rainbow

Newton was the first to understand the formation of rainbow. He also figured out that white light was a combination of 7 colors. This he demonstrated by using a disc, which is painted in the colors, fixed on an axis. When rotated, the colors mix, leading to a whitish hue.

Newton's disc

Reflecting Telescope

In 1666, Newton imagined a telescope with mirrors which he finished making two years later in 1668. It has many advantages over refracting telescope such as clearer image, cheap cost, etc.

Law of cooling

His law states that the rate of heat loss in a body is proportional to the difference in the temperatures between the body and its surroundings. The more the difference, the sooner the cup of tea will cool down.

Classification of cubics

Newton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorized them into four types. In 1717, Scottish mathematician James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types.

some cubic curves (Wiki)

Alchemy

At that time, alchemy was the equivalent of chemistry. Newton was very interested in this field apart from his works in physics. He conducted many experiments in chemistry and made notes on creating a philosopher's stone.

Newton could not succeed in this attempt but he did manage to invent many types of alloys including a purple copper alloy and a fusible alloy (Bi, Pb, Sn). The alloy has medical applications (radiotherapy).

7 Facts About Johannes Kepler You Didn't Know

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer who discovered the three laws of planetary motion. Apart from his contributions to astronomy, he is also known to have pioneered the field of optics. In this post, let's read some amazing facts about Kepler and his work.

Early Affliction

He suffered from small pox at a very early age. The disease left him with a weak eyesight. Isn't it wonderful then how he went on to invent eyeglasses for near-eye and far-eye sightedness?

Introduction to Astronomy

Kepler's childhood was worsened by his family's financial troubles. At the age of 6, Johannes had to drop out of school so to earn money for the family. He worked as a waiter in an inn.

In the same year, his mother took him out at night to show him the Great Comet of 1577 which aroused his life-long interest in science and astronomy.

Copernican Supporter

At a time when everyone was against the heliocentric model of the universe, Kepler became its outspoken supporter. He was the first person to defend the Copernican theory from both a scientific and a religious perspective.

Contemporary of Galileo

Galileo was not a great supporter of Kepler's work especially when Kepler had proposed that the Moon had an influence over the water (tides). It would take an understanding by Newton many decades later which would prove Kepler correct and Galileo wrong.

Pioneer of Optics

Kepler made ground-breaking contributions to optics including the formulation of inverse-square law governing the intensity of light; inventing an improved refracting telescope; and correctly explaining the functioning of the human eye.

Helped Newton

His planetary laws went on to help Sir Isaac Newton derive the inverse square law of gravity. Newton had famously acknowledged Kepler's role, in a quote: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giant(s)."

Kepler's Legacy

There is a mountain range in New Zealand named after the famous astronomer. A crater on the Moon is called Kepler's crater. NASA paid tribute to the scientist by naming their exo-planet finding telescope, Kepler.

When Pioneer of Thermodynamics Was Rejected

Sometimes an idea is so far ahead of the time that when proposed it is met with suspicion and mockery. This happened with English physicist and mathematician James Prescott Joule (1818–1889) when he tried to publish his concept of heat.

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Joule was an avid reader and grew up interested particularly in the field of electricity. He and his brother experimented by giving electric shocks to each other. However, a long-time association with his father's brewery business drew him closer to studying the nature of heat.

In 1843, Joule identified heat as a form of energy. This idea was rejected by the Royal Society because at that time heat was considered to be a "material fluid" which flowed from hot to cold body.

Joule's concept posited that heat was not a fluid but rather a "vibration" from one molecule to another. But at that time (1840s) the existence of atoms and molecules was a disputed subject among scientists. Therefore, Joule's visualization of heat was deemed mere fantasy.

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Despite initial rejection, Joule tried to demonstrate his idea mechanically in 1845. His experiment involved the use of a falling weight, in which gravity does the mechanical work, to spin a paddle wheel in an insulated barrel of water. The spinning increased the temperature of water.

Thus, the experiment not only showed that work and energy were equivalent but also that potential energy of the falling weight was getting converted into heat, hence the rise in temperature. So, heat must be a form of energy.

Joule was laughed at in the beginning but he kept on trying, until his idea became common-sense and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1850.

He went on to work with renowned British physicist William Thomson, aka Lord Kelvin. Together, they developed the absolute temperature scale and published the Joule-Thomson effect, in 1852, a process which has applications in cooling appliances such as refrigerator and air conditioner.

Today, the SI unit of work (and energy) has been named Joule in his honor. He is also widely recognized as one of the founders of thermodynamics as his results led to the formation of the first law.