Chapter 321 Miracle Year
Zhang Xingjiu's paper was extremely convincing, but it encountered strong resistance from the academic community because it contradicted the wave theory of light expressed by James Maxwell, which had been rigorously tested theoretically and proven through precise experiments, and it could not explain the refraction and coherence of light waves.
Regarding the former, we only need to conduct experiments to verify the correctness of the photoelectric effect; regarding the latter, it can also be explained that the wave-particle duality of light can perfectly solve this contradiction.
However, Zhang Xingjiu is not in a hurry to publish these two results. The experiment has certain requirements for equipment and it is difficult to complete it now. It is also a bit early to publish the wave-particle duality theory now, so it is better to wait until the future.
So Zhang Xingjiu just let the two sides engage in a war of words in magazines. Sometimes it was good to have a little argument, but the more they argued, the greater the impact of the photoelectric effect would be. When he used experiments to prove that his theory was correct in the future, it would cause a bigger sensation. At that time, the Nobel Prize Committee would continue to have a headache, because this theory was worth a Nobel Prize anyway.
In addition to the criticism, there were also many people who supported Zhang Xingjiu. They also wrote letters to communicate with Zhang Xingjiu. The first batch were naturally old acquaintances such as Lippmann, the Curies, and Lang Zhiwan. The Curies also thanked Zhang Xingjiu for his nomination in the letter. They both won the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.
Zhang Xingjiu won the first Nobel Prize in Physics, while the second prize was shared by German scholar Roentgen, Dutch scientists Lorentz and Zeeman. Roentgen was at a disadvantage, as he was supposed to have won the prize alone, but now he only got half of the prize money.
The third winners were Becquerel and Curie of the Sorbonne University. The former won the award for discovering natural radioactivity, and the latter won the award for their joint research on the radioactive phenomenon discovered by Becquerel.
So in the distribution of the prize money, Becquerel got half of the prize money, and the Curies shared the other half, which was the same distribution pattern as before among Roentgen, Lorentz and Zeeman.
Some scientists whom he had met during lectures and academic exchanges also wrote to him to contact him, and even some scientists who had never dealt with him before also enthusiastically communicated with him through letters.
The most active among them was Robert Andrew Millikan, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. When Zhang Xingjiu went to the University of Chicago to communicate with Michelson, he happened to be out for something and did not meet him. Not long ago, he saw the paper in Nature and immediately became very interested in the article. He immediately asked Michelson for Zhang Xingjiu's mailing address and wrote him a letter.
In the letter, he praised Zhang Xingjiu's wild imagination, expressed great support for his photoelectric theory, and volunteered to verify the theory through experiments.
Zhang Xingjiu originally planned to do this experiment himself, but seeing that he was so enthusiastic, he provided him with some ideas and suggested that he use several different wavelengths of monochromatic light to measure the photocurrent under different voltages, and to calculate the blocking voltage of the cathode under light of a certain wavelength from the relationship curve between photocurrent and voltage.
If the theory of photoelectric effect is correct, the curve of the stopping voltage obtained from these sets of photocurrent curves changing with the light frequency should be a beautiful straight line, and the value of Zhang Xingjiu's constant h can be calculated based on the slope of this straight line.
In the original history, Millikan used this experiment to verify the correctness of the photoelectric effect, and with this achievement, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics two years after Einstein. Now he is so enthusiastic that Zhang Xingjiu feels a little embarrassed to snatch the award from him. Anyway, there will be many opportunities to win awards in the future, so just leave it to Millikan.
At that time, the sailing time from Shanghai to San Francisco was about twenty-two to twenty-six days. Zhang Xingjiu's reply letter first floated on the sea for more than twenty days, and then changed to a train from the west coast to the Great Lakes region. It took almost an hour before it was delivered to Millikan.
After reading the letter, he was very impressed with Zhang Xingjiu's plan and immediately began to prepare for the experiment. Unfortunately, during the preparation process, he discovered that with the current level of experimental equipment, it was not possible to complete this experiment for the time being. He could only collect information while trying to design the experimental equipment himself and report the information to Zhang Xingjiu from time to time.
Just when he was replying, Zhang Xingjiu took out another important paper. He first proposed a new method for measuring molecular size in "A New Method for Determining Molecular Size".
Before the scientific community could react, another paper signed by Zhang Xingjiu was published in the journal Nature. He supplemented the previous paper with "The motion of suspended particles in static liquids required by the kinetic molecular theory of heat."
Soon after, the fourth paper came out and shocked the entire scientific community. This paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", dispelled one of the two dark clouds in physics: "the determination of the zero drift of ether wind by the Michelson-Morley experiment."
Non-physics researchers may find this name unfamiliar, but ordinary people only need to know one thing: this article first proposed the concept of special relativity.
Physicists throughout Europe and the United States were excited. They hurriedly wrote letters to communicate with Zhang Xingjiu. Before their letters arrived in Shanghai, another new paper was published, "Is the Inertia of an Object Related to the Energy It Contains?" In this paper, Zhang Xingjiu proposed a famous formula: E=mc, where E represents energy, m represents mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.
Before the previous letter was delivered, many scientists took out paper and pen and began to write new letters. The entire physics community was shocked by Zhang Xingjiu's high productivity. An ordinary scholar would be able to leave his name to posterity if he could publish one such high-quality paper in his lifetime. However, Zhang Xingjiu actually published five papers in just one year. This was simply too exaggerated.
However, their surprise did not end there. When the December issue of Nature came out, they saw Zhang Xingjiu's name again. This time the title of the paper was "On the Theory of Brownian Motion."
In this article, Zhang Xingjiu imagined that millions of tiny particles, that is, atoms, collided with larger pollen grains, but at each time interval, there was always some kind of imbalance that caused the larger particles to move slightly. Over time, this effect created the trembling motion that Brown observed in the pollen grains, that is, Brownian motion.
I don't know which scholar started it, but the physics community began to compare this year with 1666, when Newton returned to his hometown of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, to avoid the plague. In just one year, he single-handedly laid the foundations of four major disciplines: calculus, classical mechanics, optics, and astronomy (celestial mechanics). Later physicists called this year the Miracle Year.
Now Zhang Xingjiu has also achieved many heavyweight achievements in the same year, so can this year also be called a miracle year in the physics field?
(End of this chapter)
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