"It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics...It should be possible, these days, to collect all knowledge you need from the internet. Problem then is, there is so much junk on the internet... I know exactly what should be taught to the beginning student...I can tell you of my own experiences. It helped me all the way to earn a Nobel Prize. But I didn't have internet. I am going to try to be your teacher. It is a formidable task."
posted by vacapinta on Aug 29, 2007 - 47 comments

Madame Wu Through the Looking-Glass: If you look into a mirror, you might wonder if that mirror-world is a possible world. This mirror-symmetry possibility is known in physics as parity conservation. Well, 1956 was the year that Parity fell. That's the year that Madame Wu created and performed an experiment that revealed once and for all that the Looking-Glass world is not the same as ours. This is an epochal discovery. Nature distinguishes between left and right. Here's some basics of Madame Wu's revolution. Why isn't she better-known outside of Physics? And why wasn't she awarded the Nobel Prize?
posted by vacapinta on Aug 14, 2002 - 27 comments