Novos horizontes para a física no fim do século XIX

notas sumárias

Abstract

A short description is given of the evolution of physics in the XIXlh century. After the beginning of physics with Galileo, Huygens and Newton, the notions introduced by Camot and Joule, Helmholtz and Mayer on heat led to the great work of Clausius who founded thermodynamics. The work developed by Gibbs, Boltzmann and Maxwell in building statistical mechanics is recalled as well as the contributions of Faradayand Maxwell to electrodynamics and ofY oung and Fremel to the wave theory of light Finally, the last decade of last century saw the amazing number of discoveries which led to the emergence of the theory of relativity, atomic and nuclear physics and of quantum mechanics.