Physics: Laws and Discoveries

Explanation: Albert Einstein published special relativity in 1905 and general relativity in 1915. These theories revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and gravity.

Explanation: Light travels at about 300,000 km/s (299,792,458 m/s exactly) in a vacuum. It is a fundamental constant of the universe, denoted "c".

Explanation: E=mc² is the special relativity equation published by Einstein in 1905. It means that energy (E) equals mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light squared (c²).

Explanation: Isaac Newton formulated the law of universal gravitation in 1687 in his "Principia Mathematica," explaining why objects fall and planets orbit the Sun. Legend has it that an apple falling from a tree inspired this revolutionary discovery.

Explanation: The Higgs boson, discovered in 2012 at CERN, is the particle that gives mass to other elementary particles. Peter Higgs received the Nobel Prize for this prediction.

Explanation: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (1927) establishes a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of particle properties can be known simultaneously.

Explanation: The electromagnetic force, attraction between electrons (negative) and protons in the nucleus (positive), keeps electrons bound to the atom.

Explanation: Marie Curie, with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, discovered radioactivity. She received two Nobel Prizes: Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911).

Explanation: Rayleigh scattering explains that blue light, with its short wavelength, is scattered more by the atmosphere than other colors, giving the sky its blue color.

Explanation: The Newton (N) is the unit of force. One Newton is the force needed to accelerate a 1 kg mass at 1 m/s². It is named after Isaac Newton.

Explanation: James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism in his famous equations published in the 1860s.

Explanation: Refraction is the change in direction of light when it passes from one medium to another (e.g., air to water).

Explanation: The gluon is the boson mediating the strong interaction, binding quarks together to form protons and neutrons, and holding these together within the atomic nucleus. Gluons are the most strongly bound particles in the Standard Model.

Explanation: The Pauli exclusion principle (1925) explains the structure of atomic electron shells and the stability of matter. It applies to fermions (electrons, protons, neutrons), not bosons.

Explanation: Absolute zero (-273.15°C or 0 Kelvin) is the lowest theoretically possible temperature, where molecular motion ceases.