Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Worklist of central experiments

Another addition?

You may want to consider the LEP experiments in the Particles and Symmetries section. Lots of results came out of the four LEP detectors, but arguably the most important was the Z lineshape measurement which can be used (among other things) to calculate the number of light neutrino species. In other words, the Standard Model contains three generations of progressively heavier quarks (up/down, charm/strange, and top/bottom) and leptons (electron, muon, and tau lepton, along with their respective nearly massless neutrinos). So how do we know there isn't a 4th generation, which we haven't seen because the quarks and charged lepton are just too heavy for us to create in the laboratory? The answer is: if you assume that the neutrinos are nearly massless (or at worst less than roughly 45 GeV), then the LEP measurement of the Z lineshape constrains the number of neutrinos to three (2.9840 +/- 0.0082), meaning that there is no 4th generation -- we have to stop at three.

The significance of this result isn't quite clear in the LEP article. In fact, I think the whole results section of that article is a bit weak.

Gdlong (talk) 19:44, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Scope

Would Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth be within scope? --Pjacobi 18:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting question... Maybe we should ask the Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science people, how central this measurement is. I for one would think it does fit. Awolf002 21:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A couple of possible additions

• COBE - black-body and anisotropies of the CMB. It was deserving of a nobel prize, so it's probably worthy of being here
• PSR B1913+16 - work done on this has confirmed GR to 99.95% [1].

A fair few of experiments related to nobel prizes in Physics probably want to be included here, too. Mike Peel 07:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Horror vacui and atmospheric pressure

BTW, we have no article parallel to de:Horror vacui. Our Horror vacui only covers the use of the term in visual arts.

Which one would count as the key experiment disproving horror vacui and establishing atmospheric pressure: Blaise Pascal's 1647 vide dans le vide (de:Leere in der Leere) or Otto von Guericke's 1650 Magdeburg hemispheres?

Pjacobi 11:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I personally think, Pascal has priority on this topic. Can we single out one of his experiments as the "clincher" for the existance of vacuum? Oh, and I also left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History of Science, asking people to give us a hand with this worklist. Awolf002 11:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thought experiments?

How about Gedankenexperiment (thought experiments)? Would they come under this? Mike Peel 21:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

No, not really. The idea was to highlight the ultimate "authority" of the experiment in science when deciding between competing theories. That's why the navigation template also is headed with the term experimental physics. However, I may misinterpret your suggestion, so can you give an example? Awolf002 00:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The most famous one is probably Einstein's thought experiment, where he imagined himself travelling at the speed of light and looking at an EM wave, realising that the wave would look to be static according to Galilean relativity, which can't happen according to Maxwell's laws, and hence eventually realising that Special Relativity was needed.

I can't see the navigation template you refer to - where is it? By the sound of it, thought experiments would belong on a different (but complementary) list. Mike Peel 08:32, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The template is still a subpage of this project list. It currently will contain may redlinks, until we start working on all the listed articles, so I was not sure if it should already be a public template...

It would be a great idea to have set of such important though experiments, as well. But as you say, it appears to me that it is a separate/complimentary set to this list. Awolf002 12:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Starting the work -> Give names

It seems the first wave of adding articles to this list has subsided. The articles in this list now should be worked on, which in my view starts with making sure the names are chosen well. I think, the pattern of X-Y-Z experiment would be a good one, as long as there is no other, more generally known name for the exact experiment. Anybody have any input on this approach? Awolf002 00:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

A specific comment: I think High-z supernova observation is a bad name, because High-z Supernova Search Team already exists, and this is too similar. More importantly, the High-z people and Supernova Cosmology Project are jointly responsible for the discovery. How about the longish, prosaic title: discovery of the accelerating universe. –Joke 04:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. This name would be too close to the name of one the projects contributing to this observation. However, your alternative already contains some of the interpretation of the observation, in my oppinion. Not that I dispute that theory, but observations should be just that. If others do not see that as a problem, then I'm okay with that name. But I will look for a third alternative... Awolf002 17:05, 3 November 2006 (UTC)