Physics, Technology and Society

The links between physics, technology and society run in both directions. Thermodynamics as a subject arose directly out of the need to understand and improve heat engines, and the steam engine is inseparable from the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, which reshaped human civilisation. Sometimes technology drives new physics; sometimes physics drives new technology. Wireless communication followed directly from the nineteenth-century discovery of the basic laws of electricity and magnetism. And the applications of physics are notoriously hard to foresee: in 1933 Ernest Rutherford himself dismissed the idea of tapping energy from atoms as impractical — yet within five years Hahn and Meitner had discovered neutron-induced fission of uranium, the basis of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The silicon chip that triggered the computer revolution in the closing decades of the twentieth century is another striking example of physics giving rise to technology.

One of the most significant areas where physics continues to contribute is alternative energy. With fossil fuels dwindling, there is an urgent need for new, affordable energy sources; real progress has already been made in converting solar and geothermal energy into electricity, though much remains to be done.

The table below lists some physicists across history, their major contributions and their countries of origin — a reminder of just how international and multicultural the scientific enterprise has been:

And this one links some familiar technologies back to the physics principle each rests on: