Experiments in the history of science: are they as simple as they seem?

Speaker: prof. Peter Heering - Head of the Department of Physics, its Didactics and History Europa-Universät Flensburg (Germany)

Abstract 

Milestone experiments of physics, such as the study of accelerated motion with the inclined plane by Galileo Galilei, the demonstration of the force-distance-ration for electric charges and magnets by Charles Augustin Coulomb, the mechanical equivalent of the heat by James Prescott Joule or the determination of the value of the elementary charge by Robert A. Millikan belong to the regular background of any physicist. They are usually reported and described in current textbooks, revived through teaching devices or on websites through modern simulations, and mentioned in conferences and popular books. 

However, as the presentation will be put into light, one thing is to tell how a historical experiment should work, another thing is to conduct it. Crossing the great divide between "describing it" and "doing it" imposes to face several difficulties: from recovering the original material to construct the apparatus to the interpretation of incomplete and unprecise descriptions often left by scientists, to the acquisition of performative skills which do not currently belong to the nowadays established laboratory practice. 

The historian of physics Peter Heering from the Europa-Universität Flensburg will enlighten these aspects on the base of a specific method of analysis - the replication method - which he contributed to tune and perfect over the last thirty years. 

Peter Heering webpage

https://www.uni-flensburg.de/physik/wer-wir-sind/personen/prof-dr-peter-heering/ 

Final seminar of the  Physical Sensing Summer School 2023