This article presents the advances in scientific knowledge made in Classical Physics, Relativistic Physics and Quantum Physics and inventions or practical applications resulting therefrom.

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SCIENCE AND ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE FROM CLASSICAL PHYSICS
TO QUANTUM PHYSICS
Fernando Alcoforado *
Great advances in scientific knowledge were held by Isaac Newton from 1671 to 1728
with the development of classical mechanics with the introduction of concepts such as
inertia (1st Law of Newton), of the resultant forces acting on a mass causing an
acceleration (2nd Law of Newton), of action and reaction (3rd Law of Newton), the
Universal Gravitation and Calculus as a mathematical tool. Classical mechanics refers
to the three major formulations of pre-relativistic mechanics: Newtonian mechanics, the
Lagrangian mechanics (developed by Joseph-Louis Lagrange relates to mechanical
energy conservation with the conservation of linear momentum of a dynamical system
is the predecessor of the formulations the Hamiltonian and Newtonian mechanics and
considered of fundamental importance to these) and Hamiltonian mechanics (developed
by mathematician William Hamilton can be used to model the energy of other more
complex dynamic systems such as planetary orbits and quantum mechanics) (AGUIAR,
Marcus. Classical Mechanics topics Campinas. Campinas, 2010. Available on the
website <http://sites.ifi.unicamp.br/aguiar/files/2014/10/top-mec-clas.pdf>).
Classical mechanics is usually classified as Static, Kinematics and Dynamics. Classical
mechanics is therefore compatible with other classical theories based on the dynamics
of matter, how is the case of the Thermodynamics and Universal Gravitation. In a way,
the rest of Physics can be seen as generalizations of Classical Mechanics as the Theory
of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics and Field Theory. Classical
Mechanics cannot be applied at very high speeds that can only be dealt with the Theory
of Relativity or the very small masses, because from there need of Quantum Mechanics.
Many inventions happened supported by the knowledge acquired on the basis of
Classical Mechanics.
Among the inventions based on Physics or Classical Mechanics stand out
chronologically as follows: 1) Balloon invented by Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and
Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier in France in 1745; 2) Steam engine invented in 1765 by
James Watt in England; 3) battery invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800 in Italy; 4)
solar cell technology to generate electricity invented in France in 1800 by Antoine -
César Becquerel; 5) Steam locomotive invented in 1804 by Richard Trevithick in
England; 6) Steamboat invented by Robert Fulton in 1807 in the United States; 7)
Generator invented by Faraday in 1831; 8) Telegraph invented in 1837 by Samuel
Morse in the United States; 9) Elevator building invented by Elijah Otis in 1852 in the
United States; 9) Balloon airship invented by Jules Henri Giffard in 1852 in France; 10)
Internal combustion engine invented by Nikolaus Otto August in 1860 in Germany; 11)
Ocean Interconnection Channel the first being the Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean
Sea to the Red Sea built by Ferdinand de Lesseps of Suez Company between 1859 and
1869; 12) Subway being the first built in 1863 in London; 13) Airship Zeppelin
invented by the German Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1874, developed in 1893 and the
first commercial flights started in 1910; 14) Modern Automobile invented in 1876 by
Karl Benz in Germany; 15) Phone invented by Graham Bell in 1876; 16) Electric lamp
invented by Thomas Edison in 1879 in the United States; 17) Hydroelectric power plant
being the first built in 1882 on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
inspired by Thomas Edison plans; 18) Thermoelectric Plant being the first built in 1882
in New York; 19) Television invented by German Paul Nipkow in 1884; 20) Skyscraper

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(Home Insurance Building) being the first built by William Jenney in 1884 in Chicago;
21) Wind turbine for electricity generation invented in 1887 by Scotsman James Blyth
and also developed by the American Charles F. Brush in 1888 and the Danish Poul La
Cour in 1890; 22) Radio invented by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 in Italy; 23) Cinema
invented by Lumiere brothers in 1895; 24) Radio invented by Guglielmo Marconi in
1895 in Italy; 25) Airplane propeller invented by Santos Dumont in Brazil and the
United States Wright brothers in 1906; 26) Jet plane invented in 1929 by Englishman
Frank Whittle whose first experiment was carried out in 1941; 27) V-2 rocket developed
by Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolf and Kurt Debus between 1935 and 1945 in
Germany; 28) Computer maiframe invented in 1946 and perfected in 1964 by IBM; 29)
Fiber Optics developed by Indian physicist Narinder Singh Kapany in 1952, the
revolutionary telecommunications instrument; 30) nuclear power plant for electricity
generation in 1954 enabled by the Nuclear Power Plant reactor Obninsk in the former
Soviet Union; 31) Artificial satellite Sputnik being the first developed by the Soviet
Union in 1957; 32) Apollo 11 spacecraft designed by NASA in the 1960s; 33) Micro
computer developed by the Soviet Union in 1965; 34) Drone invented in Israel by Abe
Karem in the 1960s and 1970s; 35) Eurotunnel from UK to France opened in 1994; 36)
Smartphone developed by Steve Jobs in 2007; 37) International Space Station into
operation in 2011; 38) Tunnel Project Submarine across the Bering Strait; 39)
Transatlantic Train Project Submarine from New York to London; and 40) Military
Technology (manufacture of explosives and chemical weapons, intercontinental ballistic
missiles, radars, tanks, landmines, various explosives, rockets, drones, probes and
satellites in orbit, encryption used in computers, mobile phones, "invisibility cloak to
make three-dimensional objects invisible", among others (CHALLONER, Jack. 1001
invenções que mudaram o mundo (1001 inventions that changed the world). Rio de
Janeiro: Editora Sextante, 2014).
Paradigms established in Classical Mechanics by Isaac Newton were broken as a result
of the emergence of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity which published the Theory
of Relativity in 1905, and Theory of General Relativity in 1915, which forever changed
the way we understand the Universe. Space and time are no longer independent and
Einstein creates a revolutionary new concept in Physics, the space-time. The Theory of
Relativity is based on the fact that the speed of light is constant for all. Einstein came to
this conclusion in 1905, after experimental evidence shows that the speed of light did
not change as the Earth revolved around the Sun. Einstein said that all observers will
measure the speed of light 299,792,458 meters per second, not matter how fast and in
which direction they are moving (EINSTEIN, Albert. A Teoria da Relatividade (Theory
of Relativity). São Paulo: L & PM Editores, 2013).
If the speed of light is to be kept constant as Einstein (2013) said, then time and space
cannot be absolute as in Newtonian Physics. Perhaps even strange, time passes more
slowly as faster something moves. For a stationary body, time runs at maximum speed.
But when the body starts moving and gaining speed in the dimension of space, the
speed of time decreases for him, going slower. If there are two twin brothers on Earth,
and one of them decides to take a trip on a very fast spaceship to some distant star and
then back, the person who took a trip come back much younger than his brother who
stayed on Earth. This is the famous Twin Paradox.
One consequence of this change in the speed of time is the contraction in the length of
the body. According to the Restrict Theory of Relativity, the faster something is, the
shorter it is. Also, the faster an object moves, the more massive it becomes. In fact, no

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spacecraft could never reach 100% of the speed of light because its mass would grow to
infinity. This relationship between the mass and the speed is often expressed as a ratio
between the mass and energy E = mc2, where E is the energy, m is the mass and c is the
square speed of light. With General Theory of Relativity, Einstein (2013) decided to
further disturb our understanding of time and space.
He went on to generalize his theory, including acceleration and found that this distorts
the form of time and space. He found that space and time are curved near a massive
object, and this curvature is what we experience as the force of gravity. It's like imagine
spacetime with a trampoline, and over her bowling balls, that would be stars or planets.
The heavier an object is, the more it distorts this tissue, ie distorts spacetime.
General relativity predicted that light rays from distant stars would travel by curved
paths to pass through the vicinity of the Sun. Einstein (2013) used the new equations to
make precise the experiment and calculated the mathematical form of the curving of
space and, consequently, the curved path of the light beam. To test the prediction,
astronomers would need to see the distant stars with the Sun in the foreground, and this
would only be possible when the Moon hide the star in a total eclipse. The solar eclipse
that would follow, on May 29, 1919, would therefore be the proving ground of General
Relativity. Teams of British astronomers went to two places where the eclipse of the
Sun would be full - Sobral, Ceará, and Prince Island, near the west coast of Africa.
Fighting against time impertinence, each team photographed distant stars, momentarily
visible when the Moon passed over the Sun. During the following months, as he made
careful analysis of the images, Einstein hoped for results. Finally, on September 22,
1919, he received a telegram announcing the confirmation of its predictions.
Einstein (2013) predicted that the light rays emitted by distant stars would travel by
curved paths passing close to the Sun. This was proven initially in the solar eclipse of
1919 and then in experiments conducted by NASA. Since Galileo Italian, the sky is
searched with telescopes to capture light waves emitted by celestial bodies. The next
chapter of Astronomy can focus on capturing gravitational waves also theorized by
Einstein. In the following decades it was made numerous observations and experiments
- some still in progress - that have brought a maximum degree of confidence to General
Relativity. One of the most impressive is an observational test that lasted nearly fifty
years, one of the longest ever made by NASA, the US space agency.
Einstein (2013) states that when a body like the Earth rotates around its axis, it drags
space around in a swirl. In the early 1960s, Stanford physicists have created an
experiment to prove the forecast - the launch of four ultra-precise gyroscopes that
turned into orbit close to Earth - and observed minimal changes in the orientation of the
axes of the gyroscopes themselves which, according to theory, they should be caused by
the swirl of space. In 2011, the NASA team announced that the work of fifty years had
come to a conclusive result: the gyroscopes behaved according to the extent predicted
by Einstein.
The success of the evidence is exciting, not because there is still someone who doubts
the Theory of General Relativity, but because ratification by practical observations can
lead to new and productive applications. The eclipse measurements 1919, for example,
certifying that gravity changes the path of light rays, led to the creation of a successful
technique that is now used to identify extra solar planets. When these planets pass in
front of its parent star, affect slightly the light emitted by the star, generating an
standard of increase and reduced intensity that astronomers can detect. Another example

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of application, the most familiar is the global positioning system, GPS, that there is a
consequence of Einstein's discovery that gravity affects the passage of time. GPS
determines location by measuring the travel time of the signals received from several
satellites. If you do not take into account the impact of gravity on the passage of time in
the satellites, the system could not correctly determine where is located an object, be it
your car or an intercontinental missile.
Physicists still believe that the detection of gravitational waves, a likely consequence of
Einstein's theory (2013), will have the power to generate a new application of great
importance: the emergence of a field of action for observational astronomy. Since the
time of Galileo, we look at the sky with telescopes to capture light waves emitted by
celestial bodies. The next phase of astronomy can focus on capturing gravitational
waves produced by distant cosmic accidents, which will allow us to examine the
Universe of completely new way. This is particularly interesting because the light
waves could not penetrate the plasma that filled all the space in the first few hundred
thousand years after the Big Bang, unlike what happened with gravitational waves. One
day, so we can use gravity, and not light, as a guide to probe the first moments of the
Universe. As gravitational waves move through the way space similar to sound waves
by terrestrial air, scientists talk about "hearing" gravitational signals.
Among the inventions based on Theory of Relativity include the following: 1) an
explanation of the photoelectric effect discovered by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf
Hertz (1857-1894) in 1887, which occurs when a particular type of radiation (visible
light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, etc.) reaches the surface of certain materials, causing the
ejection of electrons; 2) devices such as photovoltaic cells used in the manufacture of
solar panels, use the electric effect in their design; 3) the exploitation of nuclear energy
that is demonstrated with the famous equation E = mc2 the equivalence of mass and
energy of a body; 4) laser (acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation") manufactured in 1960, present everywhere today - in medical and dental
offices, in industry, in CD and DVD and "pointers" that speakers use; 5) calculations
derived from of the theories of Einstein General and Restricted Relativity for correcting
errors in the atomic clocks of the satellites of the global positioning system (GPS); 6)
the magnetism that is only possible thanks to the Theory of Relativity; 7) the operation
of the old tube of TV; 8) gold be gold because without the effects of relativity would be
more bluish; 9) mercury is liquid in nature [SANTOS, Carlos Alberto. As digitais de
Einstein em nosso cotidiano (Einstein's digital in our everyday lives). Available on the
website <http://cienciahoje.uol.com.br/colunas/do-laboratorio-para-a-fabrica/as-digitais-
de-einstein-em-nosso-cotidiano/>, 2008] and MUNHOZ, Vinicius. 6 provas da Teoria
da Relatividade em nosso cotidiano (6 tests of relativity theory in our daily lives).
Available on the website <http://www.megacurioso.com.br/teoria-da-
relatividade/56607-6-provas-da-teoria-da-relatividade-em-nosso-cotidiano.htm>, 2014]
and Challoner, Jack. 1001 inventions that changed the world. Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Sextant, 2014).
Paradigms established in Classical Mechanics by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein
Theory of Relativity were broken with the advent in 1927 of Quantum Physics and
Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that has become a statement of Mechanics or
Quantum Physics [BORN, Max, AUGER, Pierre, SCHRODINGER and HEISENBERG
Erwin Werner. Problemas da Física Moderna (Modern Physics Problems). São Paulo:
Editora Perspectiva, 2011]. Quantum physics broke the paradigm deterministic that
prevailed earlier that indicated that knowing the initial position and momentum (mass

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But for quantum mechanics, this process is more complex. Even before the formulation
of this principle, Werner Heisenberg discovered new mathematical properties related to
Quantum Physics. It showed that in the quantum realm there were certain pairs of
properties of which, the more you know about a particle, the less it is possible to know
about the other. The more we are able to measure the velocity of a particle, the less
secure it will be its position; and the same with several other interconnected quantities.
Quantum mechanics arose from the need to better explain the atomic structure as the
existing theories do not explain. According to this principle, it cannot determine
precisely and simultaneously the position and momentum of a particle (BAGGOTT, Jim
The Quantum Story. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 and
GRIFFITHS, David. Quantum Mechanics. Recife: Pearson Brazil, 2011).
The concepts of Quantum Physics are increasingly present in works of Philosophy,
Psychology and even Theology. Quantum Mechanics is a physical theory created in the
1920s to explain physical phenomena in atomic and subatomic scale. "Quantum
Physics" and "Quantum Mechanics" are used interchangeably. Quantum Physics is to
explain the world we live in: the elementary particles of matter and antimatter, the atom
and its structure, constitution and properties of ordinary matter in its various forms, the
origin and evolution of the Universe. There are also a huge number of applications in
technology, such as nuclear power, lasers and their various applications in
communications, medicine and industry, in addition to the computer, whose basic
components are applications of Quantum Physics. In medicine, in addition to the laser,
we cannot fail to mention the magnetic resonance imaging, a direct application of
quantum concepts. The modern world is unthinkable without the Quantum Physics. The
most common technological applications of Quantum Physics are chemical bonding,
laser, semiconductors and nuclear physics [CHALLONER, Jack. 1001 invenções que
mudaram o mundo (1001 inventions that changed the world). Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Sextante, 2014].
* Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011),
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012) and
Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2015).