The most wonderful experiment in the world: a history of the cloud chamber

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLINTON CHALONER

No one will deny the extraordinary interest and importance of this method which showed for the first time and in such minute detail the effects of the passage of ionizing radiations through a gas ... I am personally of the opinion that the researches of Mr Wilson in this field represent one of the most striking and important of the advances in atomic physics made in the last twenty years ... It may be argued that this new method of Mr Wilson's has in the main only confirmed the deductions of the properties of the radiations made by other more indirect methods. While this is of course in some respects true, I would emphasize the importance to science of the gain in confidence of the accuracy of these deductions that followed from the publication of his beautiful photographs. Ernest Rutherford, 1927Rutherford refers here to the photography of particle tracks made visible as lines of condensation in the supersaturated water vapour of a cloud chamber. C. T. R. Wilson first saw and photographed tracks in March 1911. The cloud chamber had existed since 1895 when Wilson, pursuing his meteorological interests, developed the instrument to determine the process of droplet formation in clouds. Galison and Assmus have examined this early phase of the cloud chamber's existence, rightly concluding that, with the production of tracks and their photographic record, the instrument was radically transformed into a crucial tool of the particle physicist. This transformation was not immediate, however, and a genealogy of the apparatus cannot fully explain how this novel means to apprehend the existence and behaviour of hitherto invisible particles subsequently functioned within and contributed to the project of particle physics. My own focus is on the period immediately following Wilson's first publication of ray-track photographs. The central questions to be addressed are provided by Rutherford's comments above. In precisely what way did Wilson's work increase the confidence of scientists? How was his method more direct than others?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-77
Author(s):  
Akmal Marozikov ◽  

Ceramics is an area that has a long history of making clay bowls, bowls, plates,pitchers, bowls, bowls, bowls, pots, pans, toys, building materials and much more.Pottery developed in Central Asia in the XII-XIII centuries. Rishtan school, one of the oldest cities in the Ferghana Valley, is one of the largest centers of glazed ceramics inCentral Asia. Rishtan ceramics and miniatures are widely recognized among the peoples of the world and are considered one of the oldest cities in the Ferghana Valley. The article discusses the popularity of Rishtan masters, their products made in the national style,and works of art unique to any region


Author(s):  
Thomas Linke

Abstract This is a new (and for the first time complete) edition of a speech about Buddhism by Rudolf Otto from 1913. This speech is his first academic reflexion of his journey around the world and his most detailed explanation of his view on this religion. In the first part of his speech Otto compares Buddhism with Christianity and finds a lot of parallels. In the second part he defines differences between these two religions and proclaims – from a Christian perspective – Christianity as more valuable than Buddhism. The preface puts the speech into its context: Otto’s relationship to and his knowledge of Buddhism (1), the history of publication of this speech (2), Otto’s specific view on Buddhism in comparison to his contemporaries (3), the meaning of this speech in his œuvre (4) and explanations about the edition (5). The editor has the opinion, that this speech is an important transition from Ottos philosophy of religion to his main work The Idea of the Holy. It further is a good example of what Otto means when speaking about the comparison of religions.


Author(s):  
Mauricio Onetto Pavez

The year 2020 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the “discovery” of the Strait of Magellan. The unveiling of this passage between 1519 and 1522 allowed the planet to be circumnavigated for the first time in the history of humanity. All maritime routes could now be connected, and the idea of the Earth, in its geographical, cosmographic, and philosophical dimensions, gained its definitive meaning. This discovery can be considered one of the founding events of the modern world and of the process of globalization that still continues today. This new connectivity awoke an immediate interest in Europe that led to the emergence of a political consciousness of possession, domination, and territorial occupation generalized on a global scale, and the American continent was the starting point for this. This consciousness also inspired a desire for knowledge about this new form of inhabiting the world. Various fields of knowledge were redefined thanks to the new spaces and measurements produced by the discovery of the southern part of the Americas, which was recorded in books on cosmography, natural history, cartography, and manuscripts, circulating mainly between the Americas and Europe. All these processes transformed the Strait of Magellan into a geopolitical space coveted by Europeans during the 16th century. As an interoceanic connector, it was used to imagine commercial routes to the Orient and political projects that could sustain these dynamics. It was also conceived as a space to speculate on the potential wealth in the extreme south of the continent. In addition, on the Spanish side, some agents of the Crown considered it a strategic place for imperial projections and the defense of the Americas.


Author(s):  
Alexander Sukhodolov ◽  
Tuvd Dorj ◽  
Yuriy Kuzmin ◽  
Mikhail Rachkov

For the first time in Russian historiography, the article draws attention to the connection of the War of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939. For a long time, historical science considered these two major events in the history of the USSR and history of the world individually, without their historic relationship. The authors made an attempt to provide evidence of this relationship, showing the role that surrounding and defeating the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 and signing in Moscow of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact played in the history of the world. The study analyzes the foreign policy of the USSR in Europe, the reasons for the failure in the conclusion of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet military union in 1939 and the circumstances of the Pact. It shows the interrelation between the defeat of the Japanese troops at Khalkhin Gol and the need for the Soviet-German treaty. The authors describe the historic consequences of the conclusion of the pact for the further development of the Japanese-German relations and the course of the Second World War. They also present the characteristics of the views of these historical events in the Russian historiography.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Md. Abdul Momen Sarker ◽  
Md. Mominur Rahman

Suzanna Arundhati Roy is a post-modern sub-continental writer famous for her first novel The God of Small Things. This novel tells us the story of Ammu who is the mother of Rahel and Estha. Through the story of Ammu, the novel depicts the socio-political condition of Kerala from the late 1960s and early 1990s. The novel is about Indian culture and Hinduism is the main religion of India. One of the protagonists of this novel, Velutha, is from a low-caste community representing the dalit caste. Apart from those, between the late 1960s and early 1990s, a lot of movements took place in the history of Kerala. The Naxalites Movement is imperative amid them. Kerala is the place where communism was established for the first time in the history of the world through democratic election. Some vital issues of feminism have been brought into focus through the portrayal of the character, Ammu. In a word, this paper tends to show how Arundhati Roy has successfully manifested the multifarious as well as simultaneous influences of politics in the context of history and how those affected the lives of the marginalized. Overall, it would minutely show how historical incidents and political ups and downs go hand in hand during the political upheavals of a state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Victor V. Aksyuchits

According to the author of the article, N.Ya. Danilevsky anticipated a lot of ideas of the 20th century, in particular those of O. Spengler and A. Toynbee, by offering his concept of cultural and historical types in the book “Russia and Europe”. At the same time N.Ya. Danilevsky was in many aspects the follower of Slavophils while interpreting the originality of Russian people and Russian culture. After the turn of the educated society circles to Russian national self-comprehension initiated by Slavophils, N.Ya. Danilevsky not only scientifically formulated the problems brought forth by the Slavophils, but also offered for the first time the resolution of new important questions by analyzing the world history and the history of Slavic peoples. The author especially stresses the role of N.Ya. Danilevsky in creating the historiosophic concept that forestalled the epoch for many decades.


Keruen ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (69) ◽  
Author(s):  
A.S. Jumadilov ◽  

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet state of post-Soviet autonomous republics turned out to be the ideology for which cinematographers and screenwriters have to make a film epic of epoch - national cinema. In this article, the author can only use the ever-present cinematography, the unmerciful nationalistic culture, the ideological orientation of the film industry, the uniqueness or national identity. It's a good idea to have a world-renowned artisan who is doing all the same, seeking internationalization and gloss? Another - cinematic and astrophysical art of Shaken Aimanov, whose works live in volumes or polls, and others. For many years, many changes have taken place in the national cinema, such as national culture, a national emblem of national culture. For the first time in the history of national cinema, national cinema and the world of cinema, the future and future films have been transformed into a lot of changes. The Concept of distinguished singer Shaken Aimanova is embodied in the volume, which, unlike the researchers and artists all over the world of cinema Shaken Aimnayev, the director of which, as long as he is a filmmaker, creates a film studio as part of national culture.


Author(s):  
Alex Tissandier

This chapter introduces the motivations and method behind Deleuze’s philosophical project. It begins with a detailed reading of Deleuze’s review of Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence, in which Deleuze first articulates his claim that the goal of philosophy is to create a logic of sense, rather than a metaphysics of essence. This review introduces Deleuze’s central criticism that the history of philosophy has for too long given a foundational role to certain features of our naïve representation of the world, instead of explaining the genesis of these features. Among these is an understanding of difference as opposition that finds its ultimate expression in Hegelian contradiction. Deleuze briefly invokes Leibniz as a figure who is perhaps capable of providing an alternative concept of difference. The chapter then turns to the opening chapters of Difference and Repetition, where Deleuze again outlines a critique of the history of philosophy’s treatment of difference and its subordination to the structure of representation. This time Deleuze traces a history through Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel. In Leibniz he identifies for the first time a world of “restless” infinitely small differences which will become central to all his later readings.


Author(s):  
Alexander Murray

People with a logical turn of mind say that the history of the world can be summarised in a sentence. A précis of mediaval historian Richard William Southern's work made in that spirit would identify two characteristics, one housed inside the other, and both quite apart from the question of its quality as a work of art. The first is his sympathy for a particular kind of medieval churchman, a kind who combined deep thought about faith with practical action. This characteristic fits inside another, touching Southern's historical vision as a whole. Its genesis is traceable to those few seconds in his teens when he ‘quarrelled’ with his father about the Renaissance. The intuition that moved him to do so became a historical fides quaerens intellectum. Reflection on Southern's life work leaves us with an example of the service an historian can perform for his contemporary world, as a truer self-perception seeps into the common consciousness by way of a lifetime of teaching and writing, spreading out through the world (all Southern's books were translated into one or more foreign language).


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Taiwo Aruleba ◽  
Tayo Alex Adekiya ◽  
Babatunji Emmanuel Oyinloye ◽  
Priscilla Masamba ◽  
Londiwe Simphiwe Mbatha ◽  
...  

Today schistosomiasis, caused mainly by the three major schistosome species (S. mansoni, S. haematobium and S. japonicum), has for many decades and still continues to be on a rapid and swift rise globally, claiming thousands of lives every year and leaving 800 million people at the risk of infection. Due to the high prevalence of this disease and the steady increase in the infection rates, praziquantel (PZQ) remains the only effective drug against this acute disease although it has no effect on the juvenile schistosome parasite. However, no significant approaches have been made in recent years in the discovery of new or alternative drugs and unfortunately, resistance to this drug has been reported in some parts of the world. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a new drug for this debilitating disease. In this review, a brief history of past, present, and new promising anti-schistosomal drugs is presented.


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