Unfortunately, our textbooks and courses try to cover too much and, as a result, much of the necessary discussion—to firmly establish where entities such as the electron, an isotope, a photon, the source of x-rays, the existence of nuclei, etc. and, most importantly, the experiments that established their existence—require that we go back to books such as this one.
The authors take advant age of the fact that in many areas of science, certain mathematical equations describing new phenomena repeat their form, enabling the original solution to be immediately carried over to the new area.
Over 20 experiments are described that bring to the reader a who's who of 20th century physicists: Thomson, Moseley, Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley, MÖssbauer, Rabi, Lee, Yang, Townes, Penzias, Wilson, and so on.
Nineteen experiments by the originators are described for study by liberal arts students in a laboratory physics course.
The subtitle “tells” us that...