minouette , to random
@minouette@spore.social avatar

Happy birthday to James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)! He dreamt up his demon to deal with the very odd 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (which is not a law like others, and can not be derived from first priciples). It states that two bodies of different temperature brought together in a closed system will reach thermal equilibrium; or, you cannot use a cold thing to heat a hot thing; 🧵1/
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Linocut print, 8”x10” on white washi paper, showing Maxwell’s demon in blue in a circle in the centre surrounded by red with the words “Maxwell’s” above and “Demon” below, arcing around the circle. My nimble-fingered demon resembles Maxwell, but with horns, extra-long fingers and enormous eyes to see and track particles and is using the cold blue region to warm the hot red region. In the blue region there are random slow moving particles denoted by dots with two tails. Carved into the red area are fast moving particles denoted by dots with three longer tail lines.
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    • + womensart
    minouette , to random
    @minouette@spore.social avatar

    Happy birthday Chien-shiung Wu (1912-1997), who came up with a truly beautiful experiment to test whether the weak force conserves parity (whether beta decay would be the same if reflected in the mirror)! In my print on the left I show Wu in her lab & a schematic diagram of her experiment. On the right I show her reflection, as in the mirror, & the mirror reflection of the experimental set-up & the shocking result, that 🧵1/n

    Linocut print of Chien-shiung Wu in indigo wearing a lab coat and holding a schematic diagram of her famous violation of parity experiment (in blue and indigo) on the left side. The right side shows the mirror image except in the schematic diagram. The left side schematic shows a C shaped electromagnet open to the left. The top is labeled S, the bottom is labeled N and the middle is wrapped in wire drawn as a circuit diagram schematic with parallel lines to indicate a power source and left arrow on top wire, right arrow on bottom. Between the poles of the magnet is a big blue dot to designate Cobalt-60 with many tiny dots as beta-decay electrons, the majority going downwards to N pole. On the right, everything is flipping except most electrons go upwards (and and N and S poles are flipped).
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    • minouette , to random
    @minouette@spore.social avatar

    Happy birthday to French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Marie-Sophie Germain (1776 – 1831), known as Sophie. She taught herself mathematics using books in her father's library and by corresponding with leading mathematicians of her day, including Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss, initially using the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc. 🧵1/n
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    Linocut of Sophie Germain (a young woman in with a collar with bow, under a dark dress, with a ribbon tied around her neck, long hair with centre part, half tied up with a ribbon in her hair). She is printed in dark blue with her own words about Fermat's Last Theorem in her own script carved into her hair and dress). Behind her in lavender is a grid of Chladni figures.
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