The distribution of an illustrated timeline wall chart and teacher's guide of 20th century physics

Schwartz, Brian

The American Physical Society, College Park, MD (United States)

关键词: Nuclei;    71 Classical And Quantum Mechanics, General Physics;    Quarks;    Cosmology;    Biology;   

DOI  :  10.2172/771360
RP-ID  :  NONE
RP-ID  :  AI02-99ER14951
RP-ID  :  771360

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The American Physical Society's part of its centennial celebration in March of 1999 decided to develop a timeline wall chart on the history of 20th century physics. This resulted in eleven consecutive posters, which when mounted side by side, create a 23-foot mural. The timeline exhibits and describes the millstones of physics in images and words. The timeline functions as a chronology, a work of art, a permanent open textbook, and a gigantic photo album covering a hundred years in the life of the community of physicists and the existence of the American Physical Society. Each of the eleven posters begins with a brief essay that places a major scientific achievement of the decade in its historical context. Large portraits of the essays' subjects include youthful photographs of Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman among others, to help put a face on science. Below the essays, a total of over 130 individual discoveries and inventions, explained in dated text boxes with accompanying images, form the backbone of the timeline. For ease of comprehension, this wealth of material is organized into five color-coded story lines the stretch horizontally across the hundred years of the 20th century. The five story lines are: Cosmic Scale, relate the story of astrophysics and cosmology; Human Scale, refers to the physics of the more familiar distances from the global to the microscopic; Atomic Scale, focuses on the submicroscopic world of atoms, nuclei and quarks; Living World, chronicles the interaction of physics with biology and medicine; Technology, traces the applications of physic to everyday living. Woven into the bottom border of the timeline are period images of significant works of art, architecture, and technological artifacts such as telephones, automobiles, aircraft, computers, and appliances. The last poster, covering the years since 1995, differs from the others. Its essay concerns the prospect for physics into the next century, and is illustrated with pictures of promising award winning high school students who, it is hoped, will be the leading researchers of physics in the decades ahead. Appropriately the last entries in the timeline are not achievements but open questions to be answered in the future.