Chapter 207 Visit to the University of Berlin; Einstein strikes again
On March 10, 1909, at Planck's invitation, Li Qiwei went to the University of Berlin for an academic visit in the name of a professor of physics at King's College London.
Back in Europe, Li Qiwei has not yet gone to see Planck.
Planck only sent out the invitation after knowing that his disciple had taken care of everything.
The reason why we did not invite him privately but in the name of the school was to facilitate Li Qiwei’s reimbursement.
After all, this is a formal academic exchange activity. It is considered a normal business trip. Not only will the food and accommodation expenses be reimbursed, but there will also be subsidies.
It is evident that Planck loves his disciples very much.
Just because a physicist is famous does not mean he must be rich.
Think about Einstein’s previous life and you will understand.
As the chairman of the physics department of the University of Berlin, Planck's annual salary was only 8,000 marks, about 400 pounds.
At this time, a skilled industrial worker in the UK earned about £100 a year.
So, save money if you can.
Not everyone is as wealthy as Li Qiwei and has so many companies under his control.
Li Qiwei took Bakla and several other professors to the University of Berlin and was warmly received by Planck.
Master and apprentice have not seen each other for six years. Planck was very happy. He joked:
"Bruce, you are finally willing to come back."
"If I had known that you were going to take office, I should have gone to the UK to find you in person, and I would have dragged you to Germany no matter what."
"You can choose any position at any university in Germany."
"It seems that your tutor Thomson is too stingy. He is not even willing to give up the position of director of the Cavendish Laboratory." Let me give it to you.”
Li Qiwei couldn’t laugh or cry, and the people around him laughed at Planck’s words.
Everyone knows that Planck was joking, but this also perfectly reflects Li Qiwei's status.
Even though he has had no new results for 6 years, he is still a senior physicist.
The current positioning of Li Qiwei in the physics community is very subtle.
According to the grade classification he gave, Thomson, Rutherford and others are undoubtedly senior physicists.
But no one can tell whether Ridgway's quantum theory and special relativity will become a theory comparable to Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's electromagnetism.
If so, then Li Qiwei is a well-deserved top physicist, and may even become a great physicist in the future.
But if not, then his position will be more embarrassing.
Although the current special theory of relativity is famous all over the world, it has huge flaws after all.
The general theory of relativity that Li Qiwei used to make up for the shortcomings has not yet been released, so it is not easy to judge.
Although quantum theory has been perfectly proven, there are currently only two application scenarios: blackbody radiation and photoelectric effect.
No matter how you look at it, it is not as universal as Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electromagnetism.
Therefore, its status has also been questioned a lot.
But no matter what, special relativity and quantum theory are the two theories with the greatest potential in physics at present.
After considering various factors, after Li Qiwei returned to China, the physics community conducted an in-depth analysis and judgment on his positioning.
In the end, it was agreed that Li Qiwei should be regarded as the first among senior physicists.
This is also a very high evaluation.
Li Qiwei didn’t pay too much attention to this.
His so-called physicist level is all about increasing the visibility of physics.
Because in the eyes of laymen, Wilson, Bakra and Ridgway are all physicists, and there is no difference between them.
Only an expert can know how big the gap between them is.
Since Li Qiwei wants to elevate the status of scientists in this world, he must separate levels.
Let everyone know what is the gap between top physicists and ordinary physicists.
There is nothing hurtful about this.
Physicists are not ordinary people. Their skills are inferior to others. They are not jealous. Instead, they study quietly and may be able to surpass their opponents in the future.
Facing the complaints from his mentor Planck, Li Qiwei could only smile and said: "I also want to come to Germany."
"But I'm afraid the British government caught me as soon as I took the first step."
Li Qiwei's humorous words made the atmosphere more heated.
Next, physics professors from the two schools organized a salon to discuss academic issues together.
At this time, Planck brought a middle-aged man in his forties and introduced: "This is the director of our Second Institute of Chemistry at the University of Berlin, Professor Nernst."< br>
As soon as he finished speaking, several professors from King's College exclaimed.
Even Li Qiwei looked at him. Of course he knew the famous Nernst.
Although he had met each other several times, he had never spoken to him.
In real history, it was because Solvay knew Nernst that he relied on him to invite so many physicists.
Bakla said in surprise: "Are you Professor Nernst who proposed the third law of thermodynamics in 1906?"
Nernst smiled slightly and said, "That's right."
Li Qiwei sighed inwardly that he seemed to have missed a lot of good things this time when he returned to China.
Although Nernst's third law of thermodynamics eventually won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1920, its impact on physics was also extremely important.
The third law of thermodynamics asserts that absolute zero cannot be reached and can only be approached to a limited extent.
Later generations also have many interesting things about this law.
For example, in Internet articles that became popular in later generations, authors often wrote about minus 500 degrees, indicating extreme cold, colder than absolute zero. It was the first time for Bakla to see so many physics masters, and he was very excited for a moment.
He said to himself: "After the third law of thermodynamics was published, the three laws governed thermodynamics, just like Newton's three laws of mechanics governed mechanics."
"What a great achievement. ”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Li Qiwei smiled slightly. He knew that there was still an unpublished zeroth law of thermodynamics.
And its proposer was Rutherford's future son-in-law, the British physicist Fowler.
However, the zeroth law is more like a foundation and a patch, and it does not have much impact on current thermodynamics research.
Bakla’s enthusiasm was too much for Nernst, so he also asked about Bakla’s situation.
“Oh, you are the Bakla who publicly argued with Henry Bragg.”
“Your research is also very interesting, and Professor Roentgen is very interested in you.”
"I think you can go visit him."
Bakla was very excited after hearing this. This is a rare opportunity.
He looked at Li Qiwei, who nodded to him.
Anyway, it’s easy to drop by the University of Munich.
So, next, the atmosphere became more enthusiastic.
Those present are all senior figures in the field of physics, and the topics discussed are also the most cutting-edge and hot topics at the moment.
Just when Li Qiwei took Bakla to visit Röntgen, on March 15, a paper was published in the magazine "Nature", which instantly caused a sensation.
The author of the article is Einstein, associate professor of physics at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
This new physicist has been in the limelight in recent years and has published several blockbuster papers.
Everyone’s understanding of him has long since gotten rid of the stereotype of “Einstein who published the special theory of relativity with Bruce”.
Instead, call him a young physicist.
The content of this paper is the quantum theory of specific heat of solids.
Heat capacity is a physical quantity in thermodynamics, which represents the energy that a substance needs to absorb to increase its temperature by one unit.
The heat capacity of a solid is composed of two parts: one part comes from the vibration of the lattice, which is called the lattice heat capacity; the other part comes from the movement of electrons, which is called the electron heat capacity.
The electron heat capacity is only 1% of the lattice heat capacity at room temperature, so it is usually ignored.
In his paper, Einstein used quantum theory to explain the experimental fact that the heat capacity of solids decreases with temperature.
He believed that the energy of atomic vibration was also quantized, and successfully explained the nature of the heat capacity of solids.
This is a great application of quantum theory in the field of thermodynamics.
At the same time, this paper also proves that the potential of quantum theory is far from being tapped.
For a time, Einstein became famous.
Even Li Qiwei was pushed to the forefront.
Bruce, the founder of quantum theory, has had no results for 6 years now.
However, Einstein, who was previously unknown, is catching up and becoming more and more fierce, stirring up troubles in the world of physics.
At the same time, more and more people are studying quantum theory.
Everyone wants to see how far this theory can develop.
Li Qiwei only learned the news after returning to England from Germany.
In real history, Einstein published this paper in 1906.
The god of love is so terrifying.
Even without the theory of relativity, the photoelectric effect, and the mass-energy equation, he still beats countless physicists.
Li Qiwei wrote to Einstein, congratulating him on publishing another paper and saying that he would visit him in the future.
Einstein's paper was like a flame, completely igniting the sky in the physics world.
Following his 1905 paper on paramagnetism and diamagnetism, Langevin, a physics professor at the Collège de France, published a paper on Brownian motion.
Based on Einstein's work, he developed the fluctuation theory and successfully proved Einstein's correctness.
Not long after, Perrin, a physics professor at the University of Paris in France, successfully experimentally confirmed Einstein's Brownian equation of motion.
At this point, the existence of atoms has been thoroughly proven, and there is no longer any doubt.
At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, Millikan, a physics professor at the University of Chicago, used the oil drop method to accurately measure the charge of electrons.
This result has a major impact on atomic research.
On April 1, Buechler and others from Germany used experiments to prove that the mass of electrons changes with the change of speed.
This experimental phenomenon once again made special relativity popular.
Although their experiments were rough, they were shocking enough.
Li Qiwei had only been back in England for a few months, and the results of physics seemed to have exploded.
Quantum theory and special relativity are once again active in the field of physics with high profile.
Not only did everyone have doubts, but Li Qiwei, the founder of the theory, stopped working without major achievements.
Is he really going to be surpassed by others?
Many people think of an old Eastern saying: Physics research is like sailing against the current. If you don’t advance, you will retreat.
(End of this chapter)