Unification of Forces: There have been physicists who have tried to combine a few of the above fundamental forces. These are listed in table below.
Name of Physicist |
Year |
Achievement in Unification |
Isaac Newton |
1687 |
Unified celestial and terrestrial mechanics. |
Hans Christian Oersted and Michael Faraday
1820 and 1830 Unified electric and magnetic phenomena respectively to give rise to electromagnetism.
James Clerk Maxwell 1873
Unified electricity, magnetism and optics to show that light is an electromagnetic wave.
Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg
Carlo Rubia, Simon Vander Meer
1979
1984
Gave the idea of electro-weak force which is a combination of electromagnetic and weak nuclear force.
Verified the theory of elctro-weak force.
Conserved Quantities
Physics gives laws to summarize the investigations and observations of the phenomena occurring in the universe.
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Physical quantities that remain constant with time are called conserved quantities. Example, for a body under external force, the kinetic and potential energy change over time but the total mechanical energy( kinetic + potential) remains constant.
Conserved quantities can be scalar( Energy) or vector( Total linear momentum and total angular momentum).