Have you ever wondered why we were required to learn about scientific experiments in school? Most students get irritated because they are unaware of the implications. Without the contribution of science to human civilization, it is impossible to understand the universe. The current world is built on scientific theory and experiments which have had the biggest impact on how people view the world. Experimentation provides knowledge of the physical world as well as evidence to back up that knowledge. A theory’s structure or mathematical form can be suggested by an experiment. It may also offer proof that the entities mentioned in the theories exist. Quantities that theory deems significant can also be measured by experiment. Today I’ll be writing about five significant experiments that have a real-world impact.
Galileo’s falling bodies
Galileo Galilei was an Italian mathematician, scientist, and philosopher born in 1564. A biography written in 1654 and published in 1717 by Galileo’s student Vincenzo Viviani claims that between 1589 and 1592, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, who was then a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, dropped two spheres of various masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that their time of descent was independent of their mass. Galileo demonstrated how force leads to acceleration. Galileo came to the conclusion that all bodies travel downward due to gravity, which is a constant force, based on the law of parabolic fall, which states that objects fall on the surface of the earth at a constant acceleration. The other name of Galileo Galilei’s falling body law is Newton’s Law of Motion.
Cavendish weighs the world
Henry Cavendish, an English scientist, performed his first experiment to measure the force of gravity between masses in the laboratory in 1797-1798 and named it The Cavendish experiment. It demonstrates the measurement of the gravitational pull between two pairs of lead spheres, allowing the gravitational constant, G, to be calculated. Using a method that was suggested and an apparatus created by one of his countrymen, John Michell, he conducted this experiment. Cavendish and Michell did not plan on measuring G with their experiment. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the gravitational constant and Newton’s law of gravitation were formalized. To ascertain the density of the Earth, the experiment was initially designed. Cavendish discovered throughout the experiment that even a minor disruption will cause the force to be overwhelmed. In Newton’s law of universal gravitation, the attractive force between two objects (F) is equal to G times the product of their masses (m1m2) by the square of the distance between them (r2); that is, F = Gm1m2/r2.
Rutherford’s Gold foil model
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford, a physicist from New Zealand, proposed the Rutherford model, also known as the Rutherford atomic model. According to the model, an atom has a tiny, dense, positively charged core called a nucleus, where almost all of the mass is concentrated, and light, negatively charged particles called electrons orbit distantly around it, much like planets orbit the Sun. This experiment proved that each atom has an atomic nucleus, which is where the atom’s entire mass is held. The discovery of neutrons was made possible by Rutherford’s experiment.
Franklin DNA discovery
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer. The five publications on DNA structure that Franklin co-authored with her student R.G. Gosling is what has made her most famous for discovering the double helix that makes up DNA. The question surrounding how life is passed down from generation to generation was finally solved thanks to Franklin’s discovery. To solve the riddle of how life is passed down from one generation to the next, Franklin’s finding was crucial.
Isaac Newton‘s light theory
You must have heard about the greatest physicist and mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton. The law of motion is the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Sir Isaac Newton. Nevertheless, he made more contributions to the field of physics. The light theory, which was developed in the 1600s, is one of his most illustrious creations. Sir Isaac Newton found that when white light from the sun traveled through a prism, it split into a rainbow’s colors. Newton began his investigation by cutting a small hole in his window shade to allow sunlight to enter. He was able to observe a circular lighted area emerge on his wall as a result. When it was refracted by a prism, it took on the shape of an oblong region with an array of colors.
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Writer,
Sheikh Prome Akther
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE