迈克尔逊干涉仪 育人
史海拾贝
实验的起因
- 寻找以太；
- The famous and ingenious Michelson experiment in 1881 was stimulated by a suggestion of C. Maxwell in 1879. Maxwell believed in the existence of the aether and was eager to find out the earth's motion through the aether. In his letter to Todd of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office (Washington), Maxwell suggested a terrestrial experiment on the (2-way) speed of light, since the (first order) effect related to the eclipses of Jupter's moon was very difficult to observe, as pointed out by Todd. Maxwell said that the effect due to the earth's motion in terrestrial experiments is of the second order v2/c2 ∼ 10−8, which would be too small to observed. Fortunately, Maxwell's letter to Todd was also read by Michelson (a young naval instructor.) Michelson was, however, not deterred by the difficulty and, two years later, came up with an ingenious device (the Michelson interferometer) with unprecedented sensitivity to measure this very small second order effect…（4）
实验设计思路
- 当时的光源-钠灯黄色双线，让入射光通过分光镜分成相互垂直的两束后经对应的两平面镜反射再相遇形成干涉条纹；
实验结果
- 零结果——“物理学晴朗天空的两朵乌云之一”[1]
时间历程
- 实验1887开始，迈克尔孙1907年成为美国第一位诺贝尔物理学奖得主。直到1929年还重复实验得到相同的结论。[2]
实验之美
- 爱因斯坦称赞迈克尔孙为科学中的艺术家[3]。美在何处？——设计思想，测量准确度、现象之美。
虚拟仿真实验
延伸发展
- 相关的诺贝尔奖
参考资料
1、金尚年，量子物理学各发展阶段大事纪要[J]。物理，1987（1）：58-64；
2、引自Wikipedia;
3、周义澄，科学创造与直觉[M]。人民出版社，1986年版：P275；
4、Advanced Series on Theoretical Physical Science Lorentz and Poincaré Invariance, pp. 513-519 (2001)Lorentz and Poincaré Invariance