The most beautiful experiment in physics, according to a poll of Physics World readers, is the interference of single electrons in a Young’s double slit. Robert P Crease reports Simply beautiful – the ...

When the legends of physics such as Galileo, Newton and Faraday were driving forward our knowledge of the Universe, they did so with simple tabletop equipment, working in small basement laboratories.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. There are precision measurements, and then there’s the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. In each of LIGO’s twin ...

Scientists have long known that light can sometimes appear to exit a material before entering it—an effect dismissed as an illusion caused by how waves are distorted by matter. Now, researchers at the ...

Have you ever wondered why some elements are rarer than others (like gold versus lead)? Maria Goeppert Mayer loved solving puzzles as a child, and she solved that one, too. She also discovered “magic ...

The double-slit experiment is one of the most famous experiments in physics and definitely one of the weirdest. It demonstrates that matter and energy (such as light) can exhibit both wave and ...

Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The Matter of Everything tells the history of physics through experiments. Any book about the history of science for a general audience ...

College professors these days face an ever-higher bar to grab the attention of their students, forced to compete with the stimuli of smartphones and laptops in large lecture halls. But when your ...