Class 10:  Niels Bohr

Readings - Articles

• • "Life-Experience and not Scientific Experience"; Chapter 15 of "Uncertainty - Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science" by David Lindley Doubleday, 2007 (5+ pages); to view or download, click here.  

Points to Ponder

• An unstable atom will decay randomly, that is, one cannot predict when it will decay. Yet an assembly of such atoms will follow a predictable law of exponential decrease.  Can you think of something within your experience or knowledge that behaves in the same way: where the outcome of an individual event cannot be predicted, but that it can be predicted for a large group of events? ; 

• There’s a quote by Galileo which states that ”Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe”, and one by Dirac that “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world”. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, revered for his literature such as Faust, also pursued some science, and said that “physics must clearly differentiate itself from mathematics”. Do you think that one can you have physics without math, or physics that’s only math? 

• Bohr is cited as saying that “an unobserved electron does not exist”. Is it clear to you what he means? If you disagree, then what form does the electron take and what is it doing while it is not being observed?  Einstein one famously asked whether ”the moon exists only when I look at it”. What do you think is the difference between the moon and an electron?

Optional Reading and Viewing

For other reading and viewing, click on Of Further Interest - Bohr.