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I am the smallest number with three different digits. What number am I?

 

Answer next week!

Last week’s Brain Teaser:

The American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) won the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid.” His most famous experiment was an effort to measure the speed with which the Earth was traveling through the “ether,” the material through which light was supposed to travel. The experiment failed: the speed could not be measured! Today, this result is taken to support what famous theory concerning the speed of light?

 

The Answer:

 

The 1887 experiment conducted by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in Cleveland is renowned as the most important failed experiment of all time. Until that time, scientists had assumed that light waves must have a medium to carry them, just like sound waves and water waves. This “luminiferous ether” must fill the vacuum of space. Since the Earth’s orbit took it through constant changes of direction at a speed of 30 kilometers per second, it was thought that this would produce an “ether wind,” which could be measured by its effects on the speed of light.

Michelson’s and Morley’s experimental skill allowed them to build an instrument (an interferometer) so precise that they should have been able to measure a difference in the speed of light and plot the Earth’s motion through the ether – but they found nothing, measuring a speed consistent with zero. (This means that the result was not exactly zero, but the errors were large enough that it could have been.) Physicists toyed with the idea that the Earth’s motion might be dragging the ether with it, but as other experiments accumulated more evidence the beautiful idea of the ether had to be abandoned. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (which was published in 1905, although he may not have known of this result) is now considered the solution to this problem. In his theory, light travels through empty space – no material or medium required! – and its speed is the same from any perspective. No part of the universe is absolutely at rest; they can all be considered to be moving. If Michelson and Morley had achieved a different result, relativity would have been shown to be wrong.

To schedule a free process assessment, or for more information, contact us at:

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E-mail: info@goodprocess.com

Click on WIN for a listing of events for the Wisconsin Innovation Network.

For stimulating high tech discussions, NEW NET meets at 7:00 PM every Tuesday night at various places around Appleton. The meeting site is listed by 5:00 PM Tuesday at http://mydigitechnician.blogspot.com. There’s always free wireless so bring your laptop. Contact Bob Waldron at bob@goodprocess.com for more information.

Mak presented his paper entitled “Intellectual Property: The Key to Effective Product Development” at the Insight 2009 nonwovens conference. Click here for a link to the abstract. Contact him for details.

Click on the link to read Mak’s article, Hydrogen Bonding’s Potential for Airlaid Webs, Published in the Summer 2006 Issue of Nonwovens World, (Volume 15, No. 3)

Upcoming Events

Pulp and Paper

TAPPI International Conference on Nanotechnology, September 27—29, Dipoli Conference Center, Espoo, Finland

RISI North American Forest Products Conference, October 6—8, Seaport Hotel, Boston

TAPPI PEERS Conference, October 17—20, Norfolk Marriottt, Norfolk, VA

Nonwovens

RISE, INDA Technical Conference, September 22—24, Hilton Baltimore

INSIGHT 2010, October 17—21, Charlotte Marriott City Center Hotel, Charlotte, NC

Filtration 2010, Nov. 30—Dec. 2, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia

Vision 2011, January 10—12, Four Seasons Aviara, North San Diego, CA

INDEX 2011 Nonwovens Exposition, April 12—15, PalExpo, Geneva, Switzerland

This week's Brain Teaser

For a great tool to convert physical property units, check out our conversion program at:

Conversion Table