A philosopher at New York University asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time, and the results were published in the New York Times.
My first blog post from Digg. I can’t resist playing with the new stuff.
Just in case that link should disappear, here’s the list:
1. Double-slit electron diffraction
2. Galileo’s experiment on falling objects
3. Millikan’s oil-drop experiment
4. Newton’s decomposition of sunlight with a prism
5. Young’s light-interference experiment
6. Cavendish’s torsion-bar experiment
7. Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference
8. Galileo’s experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes
9. Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus
10. Foucault’s pendulum