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Conservation of Mass by Antoine Lavoisier
- Event: Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, formulated the law of conservation of mass, stating that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions.
- Significance: This principle laid the foundation for modern chemistry and influenced later scientific developments, including the understanding of mass-energy equivalence.
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Conservation of Energy by Julius Robert Mayer
- Event: Julius Robert Mayer, a German physician and physicist, proposed the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.
- Significance: Mayer’s work was crucial in establishing the principle of energy conservation, which is fundamental to the concept of mass-energy equivalence in special relativity.
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Development of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein
- Event: Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, introducing the famous equation (E=mc^2), which describes the equivalence of mass and energy.
- Significance: This groundbreaking theory revolutionized physics by showing that mass and energy are interchangeable and that the speed of light is a constant in all inertial frames of reference.
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Development of Nuclear Reactors
- Event: Enrico Fermi and his team achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago, leading to the development of nuclear reactors.
- Significance: Nuclear reactors utilize the principles of nuclear fission, where the mass-energy equivalence described by (E=mc^2) is harnessed to produce energy for electricity generation
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Development of the Atomic Bomb
- Event: The Manhattan Project, a research and development project during World War II, led to the creation of the first atomic bombs, which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Significance: The atomic bomb demonstrated the practical application of (E=mc^2), as the conversion of a small amount of mass into a tremendous amount of energy resulted in devastating explosions