3.最美的十大物理实验.doc.doc

在科学家眼里，美，应该怎样阐释？ ?? —用最简单的实验和设备获得最根本、最直接、最精确的科学结论，这就是美！ Whether they are blasting apart subatomic particles in accelerators, sequencing the genome or analyzing the wobble of a distant star, the experiments that grab the worlds attention often cost millions of dollars to execute and produce torrents of data to be processed over months by supercomputers. Some research groups have grown to the size of small companies. But ultimately science comes down to the individual mind grappling with something mysterious. When Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time, the 10 winners were largely solo performances, involving at most a few assistants. Most of the experiments took place on tabletops and none required more computational power than that of a slide rule or calculator. What they have in common is that they epitomize the elusive quality scientists call beauty. This is beauty in the classical sense: the logical simplicity of the apparatus, like the logical simplicity of the analysis, seems as inevitable and pure as the lines of a Greek monument. Confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside, and something new about nature becomes clear. 无论在加速器中裂解亚原子粒子，还是测序基因序列，或分析一颗遥远恒星的摆动，这些让世界瞩目的实验常常动辄耗资百万美元，产生出洪水般汹涌的数据，并需要超高速计算机处理几个月。一些实验小组因此成长为一个个的小公司。 　　罗伯特·克瑞丝是美国纽约大学石溪分校哲学系的教员、布鲁克海文国家实验室的历史学家，他最近在美国的物理学家中作了一次调查，要求他们提名历史上最美丽的科学实验。《物理学世界》刊登了排名前10位的最美丽实验，其中的大多数都是我们耳熟能详的经典之作。令人惊奇的是这十大实验中的绝大多数是科学家独立完成，最多有一两个助手。所有的实验都是在实验桌上进行的，没有用到什么大型计算工具比如电脑一类，最多不过是把直尺或者是计算器。　　所有这些实验共同之处是他们都仅仅“抓”住了物理学家眼中“最美丽”的科学之魂，这种美丽是一种经典概念：最简单的仪器和设备，发现了最根本、最单纯的科学概念，就像是一座座历史丰碑一样，人们长久的困惑和含糊顷刻间一扫而空，对自然界的认识更加清晰。 　　　 Double-slit electron diffractionNeither Newton nor Young was quite right about the nature of light. Though it is not simply made of particles, neither can it be described purely as a wave. In the first five ye