Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz

TL;DR -- Running through links on a topic can lead to interesting finds. By a circuitous route, we ran into a colleague of Einstein who lived in the Netherlands and several other finds. Their work showed that inexpensive experiments can do the job. A related post continues our discussion on content versus configuration. 

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Technology is our interest, and it's without limit. Today, we were researching relativity as it applies to some of the modern turmoils. Mainly, this is to set a basis for future discussion and work. In his book on the Evolution of Physics which he wrote with Infeld, Einstein discussed the rise of the modern views, from the perspective of the 1930s. 

One thing stressed was the importance of knowledge and the means for obtaining and managiing such. That applies across the board and usually was a human endeavor. Now, we have other wrinkles coming into sight. These are not new which we will go into. 

But, on reading material, I ran into the old topic of content versus configuration. Or, vice versa, as it's a two-way street. In fact, the TGS work has been important in following the ins and outs of technology as the web and its use became more sophisticated. Mentioning acquisition of knowledge? Mostly, that seems to be associated with the artificial. But, no, people need to  learn to. 

So, there was a hit on a search for a algorithm that pointed to a website (HyperPhysics) managed at Georgia State. The site uses Java and Javascript to provide demonstrations of algorithms related to research in Physics. It has a goal of providing information of a technial nature to teachs of High School Physics. The Georgia site also links to HyperMath which of the same approach. Both of them are great. 

Another link goes to Physics World which is all modern and mostly reporting. However, the articles are a great collection. One of them motivated this post. 

Given that this is Women's History Month, we wanted to feature Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz who provided an experiment to a French museum. It had been done by her husband and Einstein in 1915 and showed a connection between magnetism and "angular-momentum of electrons" using a simple device. Geertruida herself did experiments that tested Einstein's proposals about Brownian motion. 

Her father was the Nobel Prize winner for his theoretical work that supported Einstein's relativity research. 

This was Einstein's only experiment as his work was theoretical (and cultural). 

Back to content and configuration: old (This week's finds ...); new (Azimuth). 

Remarks: Modified: 03/24/2024

03/24/2024 --