Simple Nature - Light and Matter

The Mars Climate Orbiter is preparedfor its mission. The lawsof physics are the same everywhere,even on Mars, so theprobe could be designed basedon the laws of physics as discoveredon earth. There is unfortunatelyanother reason why thisspacecraft is relevant to the topicsof this chapter: it was destroyedattempting to enter Mars’atmosphere because engineersat Lockheed Martin forgot to convertdata on engine thrusts frompounds into the metric unit offorce (newtons) before giving theinformation to NASA. Conversionsare important!Chapter 0Introduction and Review0.1 Introduction and ReviewIf you drop your shoe and a coin side by side, they hit the ground atthe same time. Why doesn’t the shoe get there first, since gravity ispulling harder on it? How does the lens of your eye work, and whydo your eye’s muscles need to squash its lens into different shapes inorder to focus on objects nearby or far away? These are the kindsof questions that physics tries to answer about the behavior of lightand matter, the two things that the universe is made of.0.1.1 The scientific methodUntil very recently in history, no progress was made in answeringquestions like these. Worse than that, the wrong answers writtenby thinkers like the ancient Greek physicist Aristotle were acceptedwithout question for thousands of years. Why is it that scientificknowledge has progressed more since the Renaissance than it hadin all the preceding millennia since the beginning of recorded history?Undoubtedly the industrial revolution is part of the answer.13