Who died on Your Birthday?

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Originally Posted by stann

Am aware of that alright, as I was kind of trying to hint at with the rings remark.
Thought maybe that a few people might remember the experiment from school (Was it secondary school we did that? So long ago now :o :D).

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There's a neat story about him. He invented one of the approximate theories of how light moves. Another French scientist, Poisson, takes a look at the maths, and shows that it predicts that there should be a point of light in the centre of the shadow of a circle. The way I've heard it, Poisson announces publically, sneering at Fresnel's work - the prediction sounds somewhat unlikely. Then another guy, Argo, did the experiment and showed that the prediction was right. The experiment became known as Poisson's spot, which I'm sure was mortifying for Poisson.

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Originally Posted by John83

Fresnel is a pretty major name in optics.


Cretin?

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Cretin a northern word?

God, when I move down there people are never going to understand me. :o

It basically means he was an oul arse hole aswell.

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Originally Posted by John83

There's a neat story about him. He invented one of the approximate theories of how light moves. Another French scientist, Poisson, takes a look at the maths, and shows that it predicts that there should be a point of light in the centre of the shadow of a circle. The way I've heard it, Poisson announces publically, sneering at Fresnel's work - the prediction sounds somewhat unlikely. Then another guy, Argo, did the experiment and showed that the prediction was right. The experiment became known as Poisson's spot, which I'm sure was mortifying for Poisson.

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That is neat.

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Originally Posted by John83

which I'm sure was mortifying for Poisson.

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Id say he was ragin!

Thanks for sheding some light on that John!!

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Originally Posted by awec

Cretin a northern word?

God, when I move down there people are never going to understand me. :o

It basically means he was an oul arse hole aswell.

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It's actually an old medical word, describing someone with a condition that included abnormally low intelligence. Like many such words (e.g. spastic, retard) it's been appropriated by the public as an insult and become unpolitical in medical circles.

Hmm, wasn't worth typing all that out really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretinism

Anyway, Rommel was held in fairly high regard - not a member of the Nazi party, brilliant tactician, (circumstantially) involved in the plot to kill Hitler. Churchill even saw fit to sing his praises in Parliment, "We have a very daring and skillful opponet against us. And may I say across the havoc of war, a great general." That said, there's some recent stuff come out that suggests he wasn't the nice guy he's often depicted as - mainly accusations of treating prisoners differently based on race, and similar stuff.

Regardless, I think you can see how I was a bit confused that you'd describe him as stupid. Perhaps cretin is used a littled differently in northern slang though.

4 quite interesting ones on mine:

1949 – Richard Strauss, German composer (b. 1864)
1977 – Zero Mostel, American actor (b. 1915)
2003 – Leni Riefenstahl, German film director (b. 1902)
2005 – Noel Cantwell, Irish cricketer and footballer (b. 1932)

The person who gave me socks as a present.

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Originally Posted by John83

There's a neat story about him. He invented one of the approximate theories of how light moves. Another French scientist, Poisson, takes a look at the maths, and shows that it predicts that there should be a point of light in the centre of the shadow of a circle. The way I've heard it, Poisson announces publically, sneering at Fresnel's work - the prediction sounds somewhat unlikely. Then another guy, Argo, did the experiment and showed that the prediction was right. The experiment became known as Poisson's spot, which I'm sure was mortifying for Poisson.

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That is a good story, hadn't heard that before, cheers John! Put me (partially :o) in mind of a slightly similar one but I can't for the life of me remember the protagonists at the minute.
One thing that constantly leaps out at you from reading science history is how much these people HATED each other! :D