History of Physics 390-FS1-1HF

Study profile: general academic
Form of study: full-time
Subject type: compulsory
Field and discipline of study: Field of exact and natural sciences, Discipline of physical sciences.
Level of education: first-cycle studies
Year of study/semester: 1st year/1st Semester
ECTS Credits: 2

Student Workload Balance:
- Participation in tutorials (30 hours),
- Participation in consultations (10 hours),
- Student's own work at home (10 hours),

Quantitative Indicators:
- Student workload related to classes requiring direct teacher involvement - 1.6 ECTS;
- Student workload related to independent work - 0.4 ECTS.

Principles of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use:
During classes, the use of AI systems is permitted for:
1. Machine translation of source texts from foreign languages.
2. Searching for and organizing scientific sources.
3. Creating simulations and modeling of physical phenomena discussed in lectures.

If a student is found to have violated the above principles, he or she may be held accountable under separate disciplinary regulations.

The curriculum includes:
1) Galileo's Physics: Dialogue on the Two World Systems, Discussions and Mathematical Proofs on the Two New Sciences. Galileo's Trial. René Descartes (Descartes): "Discourse on Method." Robert Hooke's Achievements.
2) Isaac Newton: Early Life, Studies. Introduction of Differential and Integral Calculus. First Optical Works: The Reflecting Telescope. Publication of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica).
3) Johannes Kepler and Tycho de Brahe - Pros and Cons of Nicolaus Copernicus' Ideas.
4) Evangelist Torricelli, Blaise Pascal, Otto von Guericke, and Robert Boyle - Discovery of Atmospheric Pressure and the Mechanical Properties of Air. First Temperature Measurements.
5) Optics in the Seventeenth Century. The explanation of the phenomenon of refraction – Snell's law, light diffraction, double refraction, the problem of the speed of light. Two approaches to the theory of light: Christiaan Huygens – The Discourse on Light, Isaac Newton – A New Theory of Light and Colors.
6) Great mechanics of the 18th century: the Bernoulli family, Leonard Euler, Jacques Hermann, Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d'Alembert, Pierre Moreau de Maupertuis, Joseph Louis Lagrange. The emergence of analytical mechanics. The theory of vibrations. Pierre Simon de Laplace and his scientific program.
7) The eighteenth-century debate between Cartesianism and Newtonianism. Temperature and heat, thermometric scales, latent heat, the debate over the nature of heat, the caloric theory.
8) Electricity and magnetism in the 18th century: William Gilbert. The beginnings of electrical physics, the invention of the Leyden jar, questions about the number of electric fluids, thermal fluids and electric fluids, Coulomb's law, animal electricity, the electric pile.
9) Electrostatics and electrochemistry in the early nineteenth century. The discoveries of Oersted and Ampere. Discovery of the laws of electric flow.
10) The work of Michael Faraday, electromagnetic induction.
11) Discovery of ultraviolet and infrared radiation. Thomas Young's wave theory of light. Augustine Fresnel's mathematical wave theory of light. Discovery of polarized light, discovery of molecular and atomic spectra. The Doppler effect. Measurements of the speed of light - the experiments of Michelson and Morley.
12) The mathematical theory of heat - Jean-Baptiste de Fourier, Simon Denis Poisson, Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot. The Laws of Thermodynamics - William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Rudolf Clausius. The Kinetic Theory of Gases: James Clerk-Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann. Statistical Mechanics: Josiah Willard Gibbs. The Controversy of Atomism and Energetism.
13) The Principle of Conservation of Energy - Works by Julius Robert Mayer, James Joule, and Hermann Helmholtz. Liquefaction of Gases.
14) Introduction of the System of Electric and Magnetic Units. Maxwell's Synthesis of Electromagnetism. Heaviside's Vector Notation. The Discovery of Electromagnetic Waves - Henry Hertz. Lorentz's Electrodynamics. Physics at the Turn of the Century. The Situation in Science Around 1900.
15) The Development of the Atomic Concept in the Nineteenth Century. John Dalton. The Discovery of the Periodic Table of Elements. The beginning of radioactivity research – Henrik Becquerel, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Pierre Curie, Ernest Rutherford. The first major social resonance of physical research in history.
16) Blackbody radiation. The emergence of the theory of blackbody radiation. Quanta of radiation. Max Planck. 1905 - the year of Einstein: On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content? Explanation of the photoelectric effect, Special Theory of Relativity, theory of Brownian motion.
17) Bohr's model of the atom. Physics of X-rays. The Bohr-Sommerfeld model of the atom. The Stern-Gerlach experiment. Discovery of the corpuscle of light (photon). Discovery of the wave nature of the electron. The emergence of quantum mechanics: Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, Schrödinger's wave mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle, the Dirac equation, the Born interpretation, Bell inequalities, entangled states.
18) In Einstein's circle: Marian Smoluchowski, Henryk Lorentz, Hermann Minkowski, Henryk Poincaré. 1913–1917: Einstein creates the General Theory of Relativity. Early models of the atom, Millikan's experiments, measurement of the elementary electric charge. Discovery of the atomic nucleus.
19) 1932: Discovery of the neutron, discovery of the positron, first nuclear reaction in an accelerator, Gamow's theory of alpha radiation, cyclotron. Development of nuclear physics: Fermi's theory of beta decay, discovery of artificial radioactivity, discovery of uranium fission, production of the first transuranium elements, models of atomic nuclei.
20) Discovery of isotopes. Proton-electron model of the atomic nucleus. Rutherford's model. Nuclear transformations involving alpha and beta particles. Neutrino hypothesis. Discovery of cosmic rays.
21) Yukawa's theory of nuclear forces. Discovery of the muon and pion. Rise of quantum electrodynamics. Hyperfine structure of the hydrogen atom. The Lamb shift. Strangeness. The quark hypothesis. Rise of quantum chromodynamics. Neutrino physics.
22) Technological acceleration during World War II. Fermi's atomic pile. The Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer's role. German work on the atomic bomb. The hydrogen bomb: Ulam, Teller, Sakharov. Nuclear disasters. Chernobyl.
23) Development of solid-state physics and optics in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Classical electron theory of metals. Discovery of semiconductors. Quantum theory of solids. Invention of the transistor - mass culture. Development of research related to superconductivity. Magnetism of solids. Masers, lasers, and holography. Physics at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
24) Rise of the theory of electroweak interactions (Glashow, Weinberg, Salam). Rise of the Standard Model. Discovery of the Higgs particle at the LHC. Prospects and directions of development of physics in the twenty-first century.
25) Astrophysics and cosmology in the second half of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Discovery of the Galaxy. Structure of galaxies. Cosmological consequences of General Relativity. Expansion of the Universe. Rise of radio astronomy. Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Big Bang cosmology.