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Sagnac Effect
The Sagnac effect, also called Sagnac interference, named after French physicist Georges Sagnac, is a phenomenon encountered in interferometry that is elicited by rotation. The Sagnac effect manifests itself in a setup called a ring interferometer or Sagnac interferometer. A beam of light is split and the two beams are made to follow the same path but in opposite directions. On return to the point of entry the two light beams are allowed to exit the ring and undergo interference. The relative phases of the two exiting beams, and thus the position of the interference fringes, are shifted according to the angular velocity of the apparatus. In other words, when the interferometer is at rest with respect to a nonrotating frame, the light takes the same amount of time to traverse the ring in either direction. However, when the interferometer system is spun, one beam of light has a longer path to travel than the other in order to complete one circuit of the mechanical frame, and so t ...
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Sagnac Interferometer
The Sagnac effect, also called Sagnac interference, named after French physicist Georges Sagnac, is a phenomenon encountered in interferometry that is elicited by rotation. The Sagnac effect manifests itself in a setup called a ring interferometer or Sagnac interferometer. A beam of light is split and the two beams are made to follow the same path but in opposite directions. On return to the point of entry the two light beams are allowed to exit the ring and undergo interference. The relative phases of the two exiting beams, and thus the position of the interference fringes, are shifted according to the angular velocity of the apparatus. In other words, when the interferometer is at rest with respect to a nonrotating frame, the light takes the same amount of time to traverse the ring in either direction. However, when the interferometer system is spun, one beam of light has a longer path to travel than the other in order to complete one circuit of the mechanical frame, and so tak ...
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Max Von Laue
Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with contributions in optics, crystallography, quantum theory, superconductivity, and the theory of relativity, Laue had a number of administrative positions which advanced and guided German scientific research and development during four decades. A strong objector to Nazism, he was instrumental in re-establishing and organizing German science after World War II. Biography Early years Laue was born in Pfaffendorf, now part of Koblenz, Germany, to Julius Laue and Minna Zerrenner. In 1898, after passing his ''Abitur'' in Strassburg, he began his compulsory year of military service, after which in 1899 he started to study mathematics, physics, and chemistry at the University of Strassburg, the University of Göttingen, and the Ludwig Maximilian ...
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Franz Harress
Franz Harress (died circa 1915) was a mathematician and contemporary of Albert Einstein and is best known for his experiment on the propagation of light in a rotating glass device. This experiment sparked an argument between Albert Einstein and Paul Harzer related to the theory of Special Relativity. Harress was a student of Professor Otto Julius Heinrich Knopf at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in 1912. His dissertation was "Die Geschwindigkeit des Lichtes in bewegten Körpern" ("The speed of light in moving bodies"). His work on the Sagnac effect was analyzed by Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with con ... in his 1920 paper "On the Experiment of F. Harress." References {{DEFAULTSORT:Harress, Franz Year of birth missing 1915 deaths 20th-century German ...
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Albert Abraham Michelson
Albert Abraham Michelson FFRS HFRSE (surname pronunciation anglicized as "Michael-son", December 19, 1852 – May 9, 1931) was a German-born American physicist of Polish/Jewish origin, known for his work on measuring the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was the founder and the first head of the physics departments of Case School of Applied Science (now Case Western Reserve University) and the University of Chicago. Life Michelson was born in Strelno, Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (modern-day Strzelno, Poland), to Jewish parents, the son of Samuel Michelson and his wife, Rozalia Przyłubska. He moved to the US with his parents in 1855, at the age of two. He grew up in the mining towns of Murphy's Camp, California, and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a merchant. His family was non-religious, and Michelson himself was a ...
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Oliver Lodge
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures ("''The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors''"), Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". In 1898 he was awarded the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920. Lodge was also noted for his Spiritualist beliefs and pseudoscientifc research into life after death, a topic on which he wrote many books, including the best-selling ''Raymond; or, Life and Death'' (1916), describing what he believed to be detailed messages through a medium from his deceased adult son who was killed in World War I. Life Oliver Lodge was born in 1851 at 'The Views', Penkhull, then a rural village hig ...
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Aether Drag Hypothesis
In the 19th century, the theory of the luminiferous aether as the hypothetical medium for the propagation of light waves was widely discussed. The aether hypothesis arose because physicists of that era could not conceive of light waves propagating without a physical medium in which to do so. When experiments failed to detect the hypothesized luminiferous aether, physicists conceived explanations, which preserved the hypothetical aether's existence, for the experiments' failure to detect it. The aether drag hypothesis proposed that the luminiferous aether is dragged by or entrained within moving matter. According to one version of this hypothesis, no relative motion exists between Earth and aether. According to another version, the Earth does move relative to the aether, and the measured speed of light should depend on the speed of this motion ("aether wind"), which should be measurable by instruments at rest on Earth's surface. In 1818, Augustin-Jean Fresnel proposed that the aeth ...
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Luminiferous Aether
Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum), something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light. The aether hypothesis was the topic of considerable debate throughout its history, as it required the existence of an invisible and infinite material with no interaction with physical objects. As the nature of light was explored, especially in the 19th century, the physical qualities required of an aether became increasingly contradictory. By the late 1800s, the existence of the aether was being questioned, although there was no physical theory to replace it. The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggeste ...
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Michelson–Morley Experiment
The Michelson–Morley experiment was an attempt to detect the existence of the luminiferous aether, a supposed medium permeating space that was thought to be the carrier of light waves. The experiment was performed between April and July 1887 by American physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and published in November of the same year. The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary luminiferous aether ("aether wind"). The result was negative, in that Michelson and Morley found no significant difference between the speed of light in the direction of movement through the presumed aether, and the speed at right angles. This result is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the then-prevalent aether theory, as well as initiating a line of research that eventually led to special ...
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Inertial Reference Frame
In classical physics and special relativity, an inertial frame of reference (also called inertial reference frame, inertial frame, inertial space, or Galilean reference frame) is a frame of reference that is not undergoing any acceleration. It is a frame in which an isolated physical object — an object with zero net force acting on it — is perceived to move with a constant velocity (it might be a zero velocity) or, equivalently, it is a frame of reference in which Newton's first law of motion holds. All inertial frames are in a state of constant, rectilinear motion with respect to one another; in other words, an accelerometer moving with any of them would detect zero acceleration. It has been observed that celestial objects which are far away from other objects and which are in uniform motion with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation maintain such uniform motion. Measurements in one inertial frame can be converted to measurements in another by a simpl ...
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Absolute Rotation
In physics, the concept of absolute rotation—rotation independent of any external reference—is a topic of debate about relativity, cosmology, and the nature of physical laws. For the concept of absolute rotation to be scientifically meaningful, it must be measurable. In other words, can an observer distinguish between the rotation of an observed object and their own rotation? Newton suggested two experiments to resolve this problem. One is the effects of centrifugal force upon the shape of the surface of water rotating in a bucket, equivalent to the phenomenon of rotational gravity used in proposals for human spaceflight. The second is the effect of centrifugal force upon the tension in a string joining two spheres rotating about their center of mass. Classical mechanics Newton's bucket argument Newton suggested the shape of the surface of the water indicates the presence or absence of absolute rotation relative to absolute space: rotating water has a curved surface, s ...
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