Mysteries of Magnetism

The ancient Greeks thought of atoms as the smallest, indivisible bits of matter. By the twentieth century, experiments showed that (what we nowadays call) atoms have internal structure; a key early experiment was the Geiger-Marsden experiment, performed under the supervision of Rutherford, about which we’ll have more to say in a future post. But the … Read more

Atoms in Mathematics and Science; The Concept of a Basis

One of the most important tools that mathematicians and scientists use to cope with the daunting complexity of the world goes by the name of reductionism. That is, one first identifies the key parts of a complex system, then one strives to understand the parts, and finally one strives to understand how the parts fit … Read more