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wikipedia-physics-corpus

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The atomic number or nuclear charge number (symbol Z) of a chemical element is the charge number of an atomic nucleus. For ordinary nuclei composed of protons and neutrons, this is equal to the proton number (n p) or the number of protons found in the nucleus of every atom of that element. The atomic number can be used...	460	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	0	0	2,024	8	10	30	57
For an ordinary atom which contains protons, neutrons and electrons, the sum of the atomic number Z and the neutron number N gives the atom's atomic mass number A. Since protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass (and the mass of the electrons is negligible for many purposes) and the mass defect of the nucle...	526	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	1	1	2,024	8	10	30	57
Atoms with the same atomic number but different neutron numbers, and hence different mass numbers, are known as isotopes. A little more than three-quarters of naturally occurring elements exist as a mixture of isotopes (see monoisotopic elements), and the average isotopic mass of an isotopic mixture for an element (cal...	583	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	2	2	2,024	8	10	30	57
The conventional symbol Z comes from the German word Z ahl 'number', which, before the modern synthesis of ideas from chemistry and physics, merely denoted an element's numerical place in the periodic table, whose order was then approximately, but not completely, consistent with the order of the elements by atomic weig...	566	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	3	3	2,024	8	10	30	57
The rules above do not always apply to exotic atoms which contain short-lived elementary particles other than protons, neutrons and electrons.	142	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	4	4	2,024	8	10	30	57
Loosely speaking, the existence or construction of a periodic table of elements creates an ordering of the elements, and so they can be numbered in order.	154	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	5	5	2,024	8	10	30	57
Dmitri Mendeleev said that he arranged his first periodic tables (first published on March 6, 1869) in order of atomic weight ("Atomgewicht"). However, in consideration of the elements' observed chemical properties, he changed the order slightly and placed tellurium (atomic weight 127.6) ahead of iodine (atomic weight ...	483	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	6	6	2,024	8	10	30	57
A simple numbering based on periodic table position was never entirely satisfactory. In addition to the case of iodine and tellurium, several other pairs of elements (such as argon and potassium, cobalt and nickel) were later shown to have nearly identical or reversed atomic weights, thus requiring their placement in t...	669	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	7	7	2,024	8	10	30	57
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford gave a model of the atom in which a central nucleus held most of the atom's mass and a positive charge which, in units of the electron's charge, was to be approximately equal to half of the atom's atomic weight, expressed in numbers of hydrogen atoms. This central charge would thus be approxi...	943	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	8	8	2,024	8	10	30	57
The experimental position improved dramatically after research by Henry Moseley in 1913. Moseley, after discussions with Bohr who was at the same lab (and who had used Van den Broek's hypothesis in his Bohr model of the atom), decided to test Van den Broek's and Bohr's hypothesis directly, by seeing if spectral lines e...	459	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	9	9	2,024	8	10	30	57
To do this, Moseley measured the wavelengths of the innermost photon transitions (K and L lines) produced by the elements from aluminium (Z = 13) to gold (Z = 79) used as a series of movable anodic targets inside an x-ray tube. The square root of the frequency of these photons (x-rays) increased from one target to the ...	792	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	10	10	2,024	8	10	30	57
After Moseley's death in 1915, the atomic numbers of all known elements from hydrogen to uranium (Z = 92) were examined by his method. There were seven elements (with Z < 92) which were not found and therefore identified as still undiscovered, corresponding to atomic numbers 43, 61, 72, 75, 85, 87 and 91. From 1918 to ...	535	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	11	11	2,024	8	10	30	57
In 1915, the reason for nuclear charge being quantized in units of Z, which were now recognized to be the same as the element number, was not understood. An old idea called Prout's hypothesis had postulated that the elements were all made of residues (or "protyles") of the lightest element hydrogen, which in the Bohr-R...	741	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	12	12	2,024	8	10	30	57
In 1917, Rutherford succeeded in generating hydrogen nuclei from a nuclear reaction between alpha particles and nitrogen gas, and believed he had proven Prout's law. He called the new heavy nuclear particles protons in 1920 (alternate names being proutons and protyles). It had been immediately apparent from the work of...	965	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	13	13	2,024	8	10	30	57
All consideration of nuclear electrons ended with James Chadwick 's discovery of the neutron in 1932. An atom of gold now was seen as containing 118 neutrons rather than 118 nuclear electrons, and its positive nuclear charge now was realized to come entirely from a content of 79 protons. Since Moseley had previously sh...	468	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	14	14	2,024	8	10	30	57
Each element has a specific set of chemical properties as a consequence of the number of electrons present in the neutral atom, which is Z (the atomic number). The configuration of these electrons follows from the principles of quantum mechanics. The number of electrons in each element's electron shells, particularly t...	630	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	15	15	2,024	8	10	30	57
The quest for new elements is usually described using atomic numbers. As of 2024, all elements with atomic numbers 1 to 118 have been observed. Synthesis of new elements is accomplished by bombarding target atoms of heavy elements with ions, such that the sum of the atomic numbers of the target and ion elements equals ...	609	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	16	16	2,024	8	10	30	57
A hypothetical element composed only of neutrons has also been proposed and would have atomic number 0, but has never been observed.	132	Atomic_number	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number	17	17	2,024	8	10	30	57
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton 's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century. He is perhaps better kno...	714	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	18	0	2,024	8	10	30	58
By expressing Huygens 's principle of secondary waves and Young 's principle of interference in quantitative terms, and supposing that simple colors consist of sinusoidal waves, Fresnel gave the first satisfactory explanation of diffraction by straight edges, including the first satisfactory wave-based explanation of r...	1,229	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	19	1	2,024	8	10	30	58
Later, he coined the terms linear polarization, circular polarization, and elliptical polarization, explained how optical rotation could be understood as a difference in propagation speeds for the two directions of circular polarization, and (by allowing the reflection coefficient to be complex) accounted for the chang...	544	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	20	2	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel had a lifelong battle with tuberculosis, to which he succumbed at the age of 39. Although he did not become a public celebrity in his lifetime, he lived just long enough to receive due recognition from his peers, including (on his deathbed) the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London, and his name is ubiqu...	849	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	21	3	2,024	8	10	30	58
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (also called Augustin Jean or simply Augustin), born in Broglie, Normandy, on 10 May 1788, was the second of four sons of the architect Jacques Fresnel and his wife Augustine, née Mérimée. The family moved twice—in 1789/90 to Cherbourg, and in 1794 to Jacques's home town of Mathieu, where Augustin...	381	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	22	4	2,024	8	10	30	58
The first son, Louis, was admitted to the École Polytechnique, became a lieutenant in the artillery, and was killed in action at Jaca, Spain. The third, Léonor, followed Augustin into civil engineering, succeeded him as secretary of the Lighthouse Commission, and helped to edit his collected works. The fourth, Fulgence...	502	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	23	5	2,024	8	10	30	58
Madame Fresnel's younger brother, Jean François "Léonor" Mérimée, father of the writer Prosper Mérimée, was a painter who turned his attention to the chemistry of painting. He became the Permanent Secretary of the École des Beaux-Arts and (until 1814) a professor at the École Polytechnique, and was the initial point of...	404	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	24	6	2,024	8	10	30	58
The Fresnel brothers were initially home-schooled by their mother. The sickly Augustin was considered the slow one, not inclined to memorization; but the popular story that he hardly began to read until the age of eight is disputed. At the age of nine or ten he was undistinguished except for his ability to turn tree-br...	502	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	25	7	2,024	8	10	30	58
In 1801, Augustin was sent to the École Centrale at Caen, as company for Louis. But Augustin lifted his performance: in late 1804 he was accepted into the École Polytechnique, being placed 17th in the entrance examination. As the detailed records of the École Polytechnique begin in 1808, we know little of Augustin's ti...	980	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	26	8	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel's parents were Roman Catholics of the Jansenist sect, characterized by an extreme Augustinian view of original sin. Religion took first place in the boys' home-schooling. In 1802, his mother said:	204	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	27	9	2,024	8	10	30	58
I pray God to give my son the grace to employ the great talents, which he has received, for his own benefit, and for the God of all. Much will be asked from him to whom much has been given, and most will be required of him who has received most.	245	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	28	10	2,024	8	10	30	58
Augustin remained a Jansenist. He regarded his intellectual talents as gifts from God, and considered it his duty to use them for the benefit of others. According to his fellow engineer Alphonse Duleau, who helped to nurse him through his final illness, Fresnel saw the study of nature as part of the study of the power ...	555	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	29	11	2,024	8	10	30	58
Jansenism is considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, and Grattan-Guinness suggests this is why Fresnel never gained a permanent academic teaching post; his only teaching appointment was at the Athénée in the winter of 1819–20. The article on Fresnel in the Catholic Encyclopedia does not mention his Jansenism...	410	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	30	12	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel was initially posted to the western département of Vendée. There, in 1811, he anticipated what became known as the Solvay process for producing soda ash, except that recycling of the ammonia was not considered. That difference may explain why leading chemists, who learned of his discovery through his uncle Léon...	357	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	31	13	2,024	8	10	30	58
About 1812, Fresnel was sent to Nyons, in the southern département of Drôme, to assist with the imperial highway that was to connect Spain and Italy. It is from Nyons that we have the first evidence of his interest in optics. On 15 May 1814, while work was slack due to Napoleon 's defeat, Fresnel wrote a " P.S. " to hi...	353	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	32	14	2,024	8	10	30	58
I would also like to have papers that might tell me about the discoveries of French physicists on the polarization of light. I saw in the Moniteur of a few months ago that Biot had read to the Institute a very interesting memoir on the polarization of light. Though I break my head, I cannot guess what that is.	311	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	33	15	2,024	8	10	30	58
As late as 28 December he was still waiting for information, but by 10 February 1815 he had received Biot's memoir. (The Institut de France had taken over the functions of the French Académie des Sciences and other académies in 1795. In 1816 the Académie des Sciences regained its name and autonomy, but remained part of...	336	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	34	16	2,024	8	10	30	58
In March 1815, perceiving Napoleon's return from Elba as "an attack on civilization", Fresnel departed without leave, hastened to Toulouse and offered his services to the royalist resistance, but soon found himself on the sick list. Returning to Nyons in defeat, he was threatened and had his windows broken. During the ...	505	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	35	17	2,024	8	10	30	58
The appreciation of Fresnel's reconstruction of physical optics might be assisted by an overview of the fragmented state in which he found the subject. In this subsection, optical phenomena that were unexplained or whose explanations were disputed are named in bold type.	271	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	36	18	2,024	8	10	30	58
The corpuscular theory of light, favored by Isaac Newton and accepted by nearly all of Fresnel's seniors, easily explained rectilinear propagation : the corpuscles obviously moved very fast, so that their paths were very nearly straight. The wave theory, as developed by Christiaan Huygens in his Treatise on Light (1690...	1,279	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	37	19	2,024	8	10	30	58
Huygens's theory neatly explained the law of ordinary reflection and the law of ordinary refraction ("Snell's law"), provided that the secondary waves traveled slower in denser media (those of higher refractive index). The corpuscular theory, with the hypothesis that the corpuscles were subject to forces acting perpend...	626	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	38	20	2,024	8	10	30	58
Similarly inconclusive was stellar aberration —that is, the apparent change in the position of a star due to the velocity of the earth across the line of sight (not to be confused with stellar parallax, which is due to the displacement of the earth across the line of sight). Identified by James Bradley in 1728, stellar...	595	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	39	21	2,024	8	10	30	58
The outstanding strength of Huygens's theory was his explanation of the birefringence (double refraction) of " Iceland crystal " (transparent calcite), on the assumption that the secondary waves are spherical for the ordinary refraction (which satisfies Snell's law) and spheroidal for the extraordinary refraction (whic...	813	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	40	22	2,024	8	10	30	58
Although Newton rejected the wave theory, he noticed its potential to explain colors, including the colors of " thin plates " (e.g., " Newton's rings ", and the colors of skylight reflected in soap bubbles), on the assumption that light consists of periodic waves, with the lowest frequencies (longest wavelengths) at th...	1,814	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	41	23	2,024	8	10	30	58
Neither Newton nor Huygens satisfactorily explained diffraction —the blurring and fringing of shadows where, according to rectilinear propagation, they ought to be sharp. Newton, who called diffraction "inflexion", supposed that rays of light passing close to obstacles were bent ("inflected"); but his explanation was o...	1,409	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	42	24	2,024	8	10	30	58
Huygens, in his investigation of double refraction, noticed something that he could not explain: when light passes through two similarly oriented calcite crystals at normal incidence, the ordinary ray emerging from the first crystal suffers only the ordinary refraction in the second, while the extraordinary ray emergin...	1,176	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	43	25	2,024	8	10	30	58
In 1808, the extraordinary refraction of calcite was investigated experimentally, with unprecedented accuracy, by Étienne-Louis Malus, and found to be consistent with Huygens's spheroid construction, not Newton's "Rule". Malus, encouraged by Pierre-Simon Laplace, then sought to explain this law in corpuscular terms: fr...	1,466	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	44	26	2,024	8	10	30	58
But Malus, in the midst of his experiments on double refraction, noticed something else: when a ray of light is reflected off a non-metallic surface at the appropriate angle, it behaves like one of the two rays emerging from a calcite crystal. It was Malus who coined the term polarization to describe this behavior, alt...	1,430	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	45	27	2,024	8	10	30	58
Malus died in February 1812, at the age of 36, shortly after receiving the Rumford Medal for his work on polarization.	118	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	46	28	2,024	8	10	30	58
In August 1811, François Arago reported that if a thin plate of mica was viewed against a white polarized backlight through a calcite crystal, the two images of the mica were of complementary colors (the overlap having the same color as the background). The light emerging from the mica was " de polarized" in the sense ...	1,032	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	47	29	2,024	8	10	30	58
In 1812, as Arago pursued further qualitative experiments and other commitments, Jean-Baptiste Biot reworked the same ground using a gypsum lamina in place of the mica, and found empirical formulae for the intensities of the ordinary and extraordinary images. The formulae contained two coefficients, supposedly represen...	512	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	48	30	2,024	8	10	30	58
Arago protested, declaring that he had made some of the same discoveries but had not had time to write them up. In fact the overlap between Arago's work and Biot's was minimal, Arago's being only qualitative and wider in scope (attempting to include polarization by reflection). But the dispute triggered a notorious fal...	349	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	49	31	2,024	8	10	30	58
Later that year, Biot tried to explain the observations as an oscillation of the alignment of the "affected" corpuscles at a frequency proportional to that of Newton's "fits", due to forces depending on the alignment. This theory became known as mobile polarization. To reconcile his results with a sinusoidal oscillatio...	899	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	50	32	2,024	8	10	30	58
Early in 1814, reviewing Biot's work on chromatic polarization, Young noted that the periodicity of the color as a function of the plate thickness—including the factor by which the period exceeded that for a reflective thin plate, and even the effect of obliquity of the plate (but not the role of polarization)—could be...	516	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	51	33	2,024	8	10	30	58
In summary, in the spring of 1814, as Fresnel tried in vain to guess what polarization was, the corpuscularists thought that they knew, while the wave-theorists (if we may use the plural) literally had no idea. Both theories claimed to explain rectilinear propagation, but the wave explanation was overwhelmingly regarde...	1,383	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	52	34	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel's letters from later in 1814 reveal his interest in the wave theory, including his awareness that it explained the constancy of the speed of light and was at least compatible with stellar aberration. Eventually he compiled what he called his rêveries (musings) into an essay and submitted it via Léonor Mérimée t...	536	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	53	35	2,024	8	10	30	58
In mid 1815, on his way home to Mathieu to serve his suspension, Fresnel met Arago in Paris and spoke of the wave theory and stellar aberration. He was informed that he was trying to break down open doors (" il enfonçait des portes ouvertes "), and directed to classical works on optics.	287	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	54	36	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 12 July 1815, as Fresnel was about to leave Paris, Arago left him a note on a new topic:	91	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	55	37	2,024	8	10	30	58
I do not know of any book that contains all the experiments that physicists are doing on the diffraction of light. M'sieur Fresnel will only be able to get to know this part of the optics by reading the work by Grimaldi, the one by Newton, the English treatise by Jordan, and the memoirs of Brougham and Young, which are...	378	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	56	38	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel would not have ready access to these works outside Paris, and could not read English. But, in Mathieu—with a point-source of light made by focusing sunlight with a drop of honey, a crude micrometer of his own construction, and supporting apparatus made by a local locksmith—he began his own experiments. His tech...	589	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	57	39	2,024	8	10	30	58
Later in July, after Napoleon's final defeat, Fresnel was reinstated with the advantage of having backed the winning side. He requested a two-month leave of absence, which was readily granted because roadworks were in abeyance.	227	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	58	40	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 23 September he wrote to Arago, beginning "I think I have found the explanation and the law of colored fringes which one notices in the shadows of bodies illuminated by a luminous point." In the same paragraph, however, Fresnel implicitly acknowledged doubt about the novelty of his work: noting that he would need to...	780	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	59	41	2,024	8	10	30	58
In a memoir sent to the institute on 15 October 1815, Fresnel mapped the external and internal fringes in the shadow of a wire. He noticed, like Young before him, that the internal fringes disappeared when the light from one side was blocked, and concluded that "the vibrations of two rays that cross each other under a ...	1,584	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	60	42	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 10 November, Fresnel sent a supplementary note dealing with Newton's rings and with gratings, including, for the first time, transmission gratings—although in that case the interfering rays were still assumed to be "inflected", and the experimental verification was inadequate because it used only two threads.	313	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	61	43	2,024	8	10	30	58
As Fresnel was not a member of the institute, the fate of his memoir depended heavily on the report of a single member. The reporter for Fresnel's memoir turned out to be Arago (with Poinsot as the other reviewer). On 8 November, Arago wrote to Fresnel:	253	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	62	44	2,024	8	10	30	58
I have been instructed by the Institute to examine your memoir on the diffraction of light; I have studied it carefully, and found many interesting experiments, some of which had already been done by Dr. Thomas Young, who in general regards this phenomenon in a manner rather analogous to the one you have adopted. But w...	699	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	63	45	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel was troubled, wanting to know more precisely where he had collided with Young. Concerning the curved paths of the "colored bands", Young had noted the hyperbolic paths of the fringes in the two-source interference pattern, corresponding roughly to Fresnel's internal fringes, and had described the hyperbolic fri...	707	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	64	46	2,024	8	10	30	58
Arago's letter went on to request more data on the external fringes. Fresnel complied, until he exhausted his leave and was assigned to Rennes in the département of Ille-et-Vilaine. At this point Arago interceded with Gaspard de Prony, head of the École des Ponts, who wrote to Louis-Mathieu Molé, head of the Corps des ...	555	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	65	47	2,024	8	10	30	58
Meanwhile, in an experiment reported on 26 February 1816, Arago verified Fresnel's prediction that the internal fringes were shifted if the rays on one side of the obstacle passed through a thin glass lamina. Fresnel correctly attributed this phenomenon to the lower wave velocity in the glass. Arago later used a simila...	383	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	66	48	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel's updated memoir was eventually published in the March 1816 issue of Annales de Chimie et de Physique, of which Arago had recently become co-editor. That issue did not actually appear until May. In March, Fresnel already had competition: Biot read a memoir on diffraction by himself and his student Claude Pouill...	596	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	67	49	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 24 May 1816, Fresnel wrote to Young (in French), acknowledging how little of his own memoir was new. But in a "supplement" signed on 14 July and read the next day, Fresnel noted that the internal fringes were more accurately predicted by supposing that the two interfering rays came from some distance outside the edg...	851	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	68	50	2,024	8	10	30	58
The contribution from the "efficacious ray" was thought to be only partly canceled, for reasons involving the dynamics of the medium: where the wavefront was continuous, symmetry forbade oblique vibrations; but near the obstacle that truncated the wavefront, the asymmetry allowed some sideways vibration towards the geo...	495	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	69	51	2,024	8	10	30	58
In the same supplement, Fresnel described his well-known double mirror, comprising two flat mirrors joined at an angle of slightly less than 180°, with which he produced a two-slit interference pattern from two virtual images of the same slit. A conventional double-slit experiment required a preliminary single slit to ...	833	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	70	52	2,024	8	10	30	58
But 1816 was the " Year Without a Summer ": crops failed; hungry farming families lined the streets of Rennes; the central government organized "charity workhouses" for the needy; and in October, Fresnel was sent back to Ille-et-Vilaine to supervise charity workers in addition to his regular road crew. According to Ara...	323	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	71	53	2,024	8	10	30	58
with Fresnel conscientiousness was always the foremost part of his character, and he constantly performed his duties as an engineer with the most rigorous scrupulousness. The mission to defend the revenues of the state, to obtain for them the best employment possible, appeared to his eyes in the light of a question of ...	546	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	72	54	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel's letters from December 1816 reveal his consequent anxiety. To Arago he complained of being "tormented by the worries of surveillance, and the need to reprimand…" And to Mérimée he wrote: "I find nothing more tiresome than having to manage other men, and I admit that I have no idea what I'm doing."	307	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	73	55	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 17 March 1817, the Académie des Sciences announced that diffraction would be the topic for the biannual physics Grand Prix to be awarded in 1819. The deadline for entries was set at 1 August 1818 to allow time for replication of experiments. Although the wording of the problem referred to rays and inflection and did...	399	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	74	56	2,024	8	10	30	58
In the fall of 1817, Fresnel, supported by de Prony, obtained a leave of absence from the new head of the Corp des Ponts, Louis Becquey, and returned to Paris. He resumed his engineering duties in the spring of 1818; but from then on he was based in Paris, first on the Canal de l'Ourcq, and then (from May 1819) with th...	348	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	75	57	2,024	8	10	30	58
On 15 January 1818, in a different context (revisited below), Fresnel showed that the addition of sinusoidal functions of the same frequency but different phases is analogous to the addition of forces with different directions. His method was similar to the phasor representation, except that the "forces" were plane vec...	507	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	76	58	2,024	8	10	30	58
Knowledge of this method was assumed in a preliminary note on diffraction, dated 19 April 1818 and deposited on 20 April, in which Fresnel outlined the elementary theory of diffraction as found in modern textbooks. He restated Huygens's principle in combination with the superposition principle, saying that the vibratio...	1,119	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	77	59	2,024	8	10	30	58
The same note included a table of the integrals, for an upper limit ranging from 0 to 5.1 in steps of 0.1, computed with a mean error of 0.0003, plus a smaller table of maxima and minima of the resulting intensity.	214	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	78	60	2,024	8	10	30	58
In his final "Memoir on the diffraction of light", deposited on 29 July and bearing the Latin epigraph " Natura simplex et fecunda " ("Nature simple and fertile"), Fresnel slightly expanded the two tables without changing the existing figures, except for a correction to the first minimum of intensity. For completeness,...	1,420	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	79	61	2,024	8	10	30	58
For the experimental testing of his calculations, Fresnel used red light with a wavelength of 638 nm, which he deduced from the diffraction pattern in the simple case in which light incident on a single slit was focused by a cylindrical lens. For a variety of distances from the source to the obstacle and from the obsta...	942	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	80	62	2,024	8	10	30	58
Near the end of the memoir, Fresnel summed up the difference between Huygens's use of secondary waves and his own: whereas Huygens says there is light only where the secondary waves exactly agree, Fresnel says there is complete darkness only where the secondary waves exactly cancel out.	287	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	81	63	2,024	8	10	30	58
The judging committee comprised Laplace, Biot, and Poisson (all corpuscularists), Gay-Lussac (uncommitted), and Arago, who eventually wrote the committee's report. Although entries in the competition were supposed to be anonymous to the judges, Fresnel's must have been recognizable by the content. There was only one ot...	910	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	82	64	2,024	8	10	30	58
The committee deliberated into the new year. Then Poisson, exploiting a case in which Fresnel's theory gave easy integrals, predicted that if a circular obstacle were illuminated by a point-source, there should be (according to the theory) a bright spot in the center of the shadow, illuminated as brightly as the exteri...	520	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	83	65	2,024	8	10	30	58
The unanimous report of the committee, read at the meeting of the Académie on 15 March 1819, awarded the prize to "the memoir marked no. 2, and bearing as epigraph: Natura simplex et fecunda." At the same meeting, after the judgment was delivered, the president of the Académie opened a sealed note accompanying the memo...	445	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	84	66	2,024	8	10	30	58
Arago's verification of Poisson's counter-intuitive prediction passed into folklore as if it had decided the prize. That view, however, is not supported by the judges' report, which gave the matter only two sentences in the penultimate paragraph. Neither did Fresnel's triumph immediately convert Laplace, Biot, and Pois...	1,263	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	85	67	2,024	8	10	30	58
An emission theory of light was one that regarded the propagation of light as the transport of some kind of matter. While the corpuscular theory was obviously an emission theory, the converse did not follow: in principle, one could be an emissionist without being a corpuscularist. This was convenient because, beyond th...	1,254	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	86	68	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel, in contrast, decided to introduce polarization into interference experiments.	86	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	87	69	2,024	8	10	30	58
In July or August 1816, Fresnel discovered that when a birefringent crystal produced two images of a single slit, he could not obtain the usual two-slit interference pattern, even if he compensated for the different propagation times. A more general experiment, suggested by Arago, found that if the two beams of a doubl...	715	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	88	70	2,024	8	10	30	58
In a memoir drafted on 30 August 1816 and revised on 6 October, Fresnel reported an experiment in which he placed two matching thin laminae in a double-slit apparatus—one over each slit, with their optic axes perpendicular—and obtained two interference patterns offset in opposite directions, with perpendicular polariza...	597	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	89	71	2,024	8	10	30	58
Accordingly, in the same memoir, Fresnel offered his first attempt at a wave theory of chromatic polarization. When polarized light passed through a crystal lamina, it was split into ordinary and extraordinary waves (with intensities described by Malus's law), and these were perpendicularly polarized and therefore did ...	1,521	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	90	72	2,024	8	10	30	58
He solved that problem in a "supplement" signed on 15 January 1818 (mentioned above). In the same document, he accommodated Malus's law by proposing an underlying law: that if polarized light is incident on a birefringent crystal with its optic axis at an angle θ to the "plane of polarization", the ordinary and extraor...	907	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	91	73	2,024	8	10	30	58
Fresnel applied the same principles to the standard case of chromatic polarization, in which one birefringent lamina was sliced parallel to its axis and placed between a polarizer and an analyzer. If the analyzer took the form of a thick calcite crystal with its axis in the plane of polarization, Fresnel predicted that...	425	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	92	74	2,024	8	10	30	58
where i is the angle from the initial plane of polarization to the optic axis of the lamina, s is the angle from the initial plane of polarization to the plane of polarization of the final ordinary image, and ϕ ϕ is the phase lag of the extraordinary wave relative to the ordinary wave due to the difference in propagati...	715	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	93	75	2,024	8	10	30	58
From these equations it is easily verified that I o + I e = 1 for all ϕ ϕ , so that the colors are complementary. Without the phase-inversion rule, there would be a plus sign in front of the last term in the second equation, so that the ϕ ϕ -dependent term would be the same in both equations, implying (incorrectly) tha...	354	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	94	76	2,024	8	10	30	58
These equations were included in an undated note that Fresnel gave to Biot, to which Biot added a few lines of his own. If we substitute	136	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	95	77	2,024	8	10	30	58
then Fresnel's formulae can be rewritten as	43	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	96	78	2,024	8	10	30	58
which are none other than Biot's empirical formulae of 1812, except that Biot interpreted U and A as the "unaffected" and "affected" selections of the rays incident on the lamina. If Biot's substitutions were accurate, they would imply that his experimental results were more fully explained by Fresnel's theory than by ...	328	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	97	79	2,024	8	10	30	58
Arago delayed reporting on Fresnel's works on chromatic polarization until June 1821, when he used them in a broad attack on Biot's theory. In his written response, Biot protested that Arago's attack went beyond the proper scope of a report on the nominated works of Fresnel. But Biot also claimed that the substitutions...	1,330	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	98	80	2,024	8	10	30	58
Moreover, by this time Fresnel had a new, simpler explanation of his equations on chromatic polarization.	105	Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel	99	81	2,024	8	10	30	58

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Dataset Card for the Wikipedia-Physics Corpus

Wikipedia-Physics Corpus contains 102,409 paragraphs extracted from 6,642 key physics-related Wikipedia articles as well as word-sense labels for 1,186 occurrences of "Planck" across 885 paragraphs.

This table details the main columns of the dataset:

Column	Description
text	Full text of the paragraph
length	Number of unicode characters in the paragraph
page_title	Titel of the Wikipedia article
url	URL of the Wikipedia article
text_id	ID of the text/paragraph
paragraph_idx	Relative index of the text/paragraph
year	Year of the download of the Wikipedia article
month	Month of the download of the Wikipedia article
day	Day of the download of the Wikipedia article
minute	Year of the download of the Wikipedia article
second	Year of the download of the Wikipedia article
num_planck_labels	Number of labeled occurrences of "Planck" in the paragraph
planck_labels	List of word-sense labels for all occurrences of "Planck" in the paragraph

The primary purpose of the Wikipedia-Physics Corpus lies in its use for analyzing the meaning of concepts in physics. For further insights into the corpus and the underlying research project (Network Epistemology in Practice) please refer to this paper:

Simons, A. (2024). Meaning at the planck scale? Contextualized word embeddings for doing history, philosophy, and sociology of science. arXiv:2411.14073.

Construction

Wikipedia articles were selected using the PetScan tool, which generated a list of all pages categorized under "physics" or its immediate subcategories. Markup was removed and minimal cleaning applied to produce plain text paragraphs, and while references were removed, all formulas were retained.

Additionally, 1,186 occurrences of the term "Planck" were labeled across 885 paragraphs containing the term. These occurrences were identified using a case-insensitive regular expression to capture variations like "PLANCK" and "Planck(2015)"" while excluding irrelevant forms like "planckian". The labels denote distinct meanings of the target term, such as PERSON, CONSTANT, UNITS, LAW, MPS, MISSION, and FOKKER.

Details

Developer: Arno Simons
Funded by: The European Union under Grant agreement ID: 101044932
Language: English

Downloads last month: 123

Models trained or fine-tuned on arnosimons/wikipedia-physics-corpus

alplusplus/vibecheck-v2-138M

Text Classification • Updated 30 days ago • 100 • 1

Paper for arnosimons/wikipedia-physics-corpus

Meaning at the Planck scale? Contextualized word embeddings for doing history, philosophy, and sociology of science

Paper • 2411.14073 • Published Nov 21, 2024