Physics goes inside the ear
In 1960 von Bekesy published the results of his classic measurements on the cochlea, which suggested that the ear was essentially a linear device. However, von Bekesy conducted his experiments on cada...
Changes at PhysicsWeb
The new Buyer’s Guide contains information on a wide range of physics equipment: cryogenics, lab electronics, lasers, magnets, microscopy, power supplies, test & measurement and vacuum are j...
Could Maxwell have deciphered quantum mechanics?
There is no doubt that quantum theory has been remarkably successful and has passed every experimental test it has been subject to. But the interpretation of quantum theory – in particular the m...
New insights into surfaces
Berndt and co-workers prepared gold, silver and copper surfaces with standard techniques and then used a scanning tunnelling microscope with a specially prepared tungsten tip to identify regions on th...
Not all clusters are the same
Smaller clusters tend to have elongated shapes, and the energy of formation is essentially independent of the number of atoms in the cluster. Larger clusters are spherical and the formation energy is ...
The many shapes of lead-186
Mark Huyse from the University of Leuven in Belgium and co-workers in Germany, Slovakia, the UK, Finland, Russia, Sweden and Belgium studied lead-186, which contains 82 protons and 104 neutrons. 82 is...
Phenomenology success for Durham
The institute has been established for 10 years in the first instance, with the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) investing £7m and the University of Durham investing £...
US astronomers look to the future
The other priorities established by the panel are the ground-based 30-metre Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope, the space-based Constellation-X Observatory, expansion of the Very Large Array radio teles...
PPARC starts to identify its priorities
The particle physics panel identified three projects related to the Large Hadron Collider – a 14 TeV proton-proton collider that is due to start in 2005 at CERN – as top priority. These we...
Hendrik Casimir and John Ward
Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir was born in the Hague in the Netherlands in 1909 and received his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1931. After working with Bohr in Copenhagen and Pauli in Zurich, he...
