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Educational Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlaGxYjnoPY&t=133s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtcUS4WWCAk These two videos are short, yet educational. One is random facts about Ernst Mach. The second one is describing what I feel is his greatest contribution, the Mach number. -
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Life and Death
Born in Moravia, Austria. Died near Munich. -
The Mach Lines
Mach published “On the effect of the spatial distribution of the light stimulus on the retina,” which explained that the thin dark bands at the edge, and the thin light bands in the middle of a gradient, were just our eyes pre-processing information before sending it to our brains. In this time, optical illusions were thought as errors in judgment in the brain, rather than judgement in the senses. Mach argued this, and has been credited as discovering this effect known as lateral inhibition. -
Mach Stem Effect
Mach's work on reflecting Mach waves led to a later discovery of an explosive effect, called the Mach Stem. When two shock waves reflect off surfaces, and collide at an angle, they then enhance the forces of each other producing the Mach Stem Effect. This picture is a visual representation of a Mach wave in a setting related to my career, and a demo shot we made. -
The Mach number
Mach's namesake contribution was when he was working at Charles University, working on projectile ballistics. Mach realize that when a projectile moves faster than the speed of sound, it produces a shock wave around it. Mach was able to create a new device to photograph the effect. This became measurable and known as the Mach number, which is determined by the relationship between the speed of an object, and speed of sound. -
Analysis of Sensations
One of Mach's most important ideas was that what we experience as humans are not necessarily laws of nature, but just how we perceive the universe around us. His theory was outlined in his book "Analysis of Sensations." Mach wrote most about was Space in this book, speaking on a philosophical level about how there are two concepts: Geometrical space, being unbounded, infinite and homogenous, and Physiological space, being highly bounded, finite, and non-uniform.