1.14 Text The radical years: general relativity and quantum mechanics

1.14.1 Read the text, translate it and name the main steps of the mechanics development in the first half of the 20th century.

The gradual acceptance of Einstein’s theories of relativity and the quantized nature of light transmission, and of Niels Bohr’s model of the atom created as many problems as they solved, leading to a full-scale effort to reestablish physics on new fundamental principles. Expanding relativity to cases of accelerating reference frames (the “general theory of relativity”) in the 1910s, Einstein posited an equivalence between the inertial force of acceleration and the force of gravity, leading to the conclusion that space is curved and finite in size, and the prediction of such phenomena as gravitational lensing and the distortion of time in gravitational fields.

Figure 11 - Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

The quantized theory of the atom gave way to a full-scale quantum mechanics in the 1920s. The quantum theory (which previously relied in the “correspondence” at large scales between the quantized world of the atom and the continuities of the “classical” world) was accepted when the Compton Effect established that light carries momentum and can scatter off particles, and when Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can be seen as behaving as a wave in much the same way as electromagnetic waves behave like particles (wave-particle duality). New principles of a “quantum” rather than a “classical” mechanics, formulated in matrix form by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925, were based on the probabilistic relationship between discrete “states” and denied the possibility of causality. Erwin Schrödinger established an equivalent theory based on waves in 1926; but Heisenberg’s 1927 “uncertainty principle” (indicating the impossibility of precisely and simultaneously measuring position and momentum) and the “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics (named after Bohr’s home city) continued to deny the possibility of fundamental causality, though opponents such as Einstein would assert that “God does not play dice with the universe”. Also in the 1920s, Satyendra Nath Bose’s work on photons and quantum mechanics provided the foundation for Bose-Einstein statistics, the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate, and the discovery of the boson.

1.15 Revision texts 1.13 - 1.1

1.15.1 Match words and word-combinations with their translation:

unstable configuration	наблюдатель, эксперт
radioactivity	угол
quantum theory	фотоэлектронная эмиссия (эффект активно-электрический)
assertion	гравитационная фокусировка
interchangeable quantities	избыточный, излишний
to scatter off particles	распад, разложение
to measure	ядерное деление
theory of relativity	искажение времени
matrix form	двойственность, дуализм
angle	явления
gravitational lensing	радиоактивность
to deny	измерять, мерить
photoelectric effect	излучение черного тела
superfluous	утверждение
boson	теория относительности
hydrogen gas	неустойчивая (нестабильная) конфигурация
to emerge	причинная связь, обусловленность
inertial force	отрицать, отвергать
nuclear fission	рассеивать частицы
distortion of time	сжатый электрон
decay	квантовая теория
light transmission	испускать излучение
phenomena	матричная форма (уравнения)
observer	взаимозаменяемые (взаимозаместимые) величины
duality	возникать, появляться
compressed electron	икс-лучи, рентгеновские лучи
x-rays	бозон, бозе-частица
blackbody radiation	газ водорода
causality	передача (пропускание) света
emit radiation	инерционная сила, сила инерции

1.15.2 Find the sentences with these words and word-combinations in texts 1.13 - 1.14 and translate them.

1.15.3 Prepare the words and word-combinations for a dictation.