Findings

Every experiment this lab has run end to end — the question, the method, the measured number, the control that could have falsified it, and a confidence. 104 results, each with its own page and each reproducible from the command shown on it.

Emergence & collective behaviour 16

• Non-reciprocal Particle Life0.85 measured vs 0.85 known per-sim-step (dt = 1/45 s)…Is the ?world=active screen's claim — reciprocal forces (α = 0) settle into a static equilibrium with EXACTLY zero net drift, and non-reciprocity…
• Langton's ant: Order out of chaos, exactly104 measured vs 104 known steps per highway cycle…Does a two-line deterministic rule with a writable tape really self-organize out of its own chaos into EXACT periodic order — the period-104 highway…
• Condensation: Particle Life condensation0.247801 measured vs 0.24760709 known E[isolated fraction] of…Is the number the condensation sweep optimizes — the bound fraction that ClusterMetricsModule's union-find reports and ?world=condense crosses at ½…
• Conway's Game of Life: Deterministic chaos with an exact fossil record1103 measured vs 1103 known generations to…Does the two-line B3/S23 rule really manufacture EXACT, reproducible constants out of deterministic transient chaos — the R-pentomino's…
• Spatial prisoner's dilemma: Cooperation weighed on a lattice0.31529 measured vs 0.31776617 known dimensionless (12 ln 2 −…Among purely selfish agents, where defecting always pays more than cooperating, can cooperation survive at all — and does the spatial-chaos regime…
• Diffusion-limited aggregation: The branch that weighs 1.721.7239 measured vs 1.71 known dimensionless (mass…Does the local sticking rule of diffusion-limited aggregation — a particle random-walks in and stops on first contact — grow a genuine self-similar…
• Elementary cellular automata: A one-line 8-bit local rule paints an EXACT fractal, and which one is picked by the rule's…1.5849625 measured vs 1.5849625 known dimensionless (fractal…Can a trivial 8-bit local update rule generate a genuine fractal with an exact non-integer dimension — and is that dimension set by the rule's…
• Flocking (Vicsek)0.9979 measured vs 1 known N·E[φ²] for iid uniform…Is the polar order parameter φ = |Σe^{iθ}|/N — the single number the flock world prints on-screen and sweeps to locate its order–disorder transition…
• Hopfield network: Memory weighed at its breaking point0.13886 measured vs 0.138 known dimensionless critical…If you store memories in the Hebbian weights of a recurrent network of N binary neurons, how many can it hold before interference destroys recall —…
• Particle Life condensation hysteresisIs Particle Life's condensation transition first-order? The ?world=hysteresis screen sweeps the mean-interaction shift μ up through condensation and…
• Kinetic surface roughening: The local growth rule, not the noise, picks the roughening universality class0.3353 measured vs 0.33333333 known dimensionless (KPZ/RSOS…Why does a growing surface get rough, and does a tiny change in the LOCAL growth rule change how rough — i.e. does the microscopic rule select a…
• Emergent matter: Pair correlation g(r)3.7009 measured vs 3.7037037 known dimensionless g(σ⁺) at η =…Is the lab's g(r) instrument — the radial distribution function it uses to ask what phase of matter an emergent Particle Life world forms — a…
• Particle Life 2-D phase map0.85 measured vs 0.85 known per-sim-step (dt = 1/45 s)…Is the ?world=phasemap screen's central claim — a 2-D diagram with two roughly independent axes (μ binds, α moves), four corner regimes, and a…
• Phyllotaxis: Validated → validated + honest moduleWhy do sunflowers, pinecones and daisies place their florets at the golden angle ≈137.5°? Is that angle actually SELECTED by efficient packing —…
• Reaction–diffusion / Turing scale selection11.94815 measured vs 11.947825 known dimensionless Gray–Scott…Does a structureless chemical soup pick a length scale on its own — and is that scale the fastest-growing Turing mode of the linearized dynamics…
• Schelling segregation0.499721 measured vs 0.5 known E[S] on the initial random…Are the two numbers the Schelling world prints on-screen — the segregation index S and the unhappy fraction U — calibrated instruments? Do they read…

Quantum & atomic physics 13

• Bell / CHSH: Bell's theorem, measured2.8283 measured vs 2.8284271 known dimensionless (CHSH…Can the correlations between two entangled particles be explained by any theory in which each particle carries predetermined answers fixed at…
• Blackbody radiation: The curve that started quantum theory, rebuilt from nothing but counting0.002898005 measured vs 0.002897772 known m·K (Wien displacement…A hot object glows; classical physics says that glow should carry infinite power. Do Wien's displacement constant and the Stefan–Boltzmann constant…
• Compton scattering: The photon carries momentum2.4263e-12 measured vs 2.4263e-12 known m (electron Compton…When light bounces off an electron, does its wavelength change? Classical wave theory (Thomson scattering) says no — the electron re-radiates at the…
• De Broglie matter waves: Planck's constant h=(6.59±0.04)×10⁻³⁴ J·s and the matter-wave exponent −½ recovered from…6.5932e-34 measured vs 6.6261e-34 known J·s (CODATA-2018 Planck…If an electron is a particle, why does a beam of electrons fired at a crystal come off in sharp bright angles like a wave — and can the angles alone…
• Franck–Hertz: Mercury's first-excitation energy E_exc = 4.90 eV, recovered as the spacing of equally-spaced…4.9029 measured vs 4.9 knownWhen an electron collides with an atom, will the atom accept any amount of energy handed to it — as a classical object should — or only one specific…
• Hydrogen spectrum: The Rydberg constant from Schrödinger's equation itself1.0974e+7 measured vs 1.0974e+7 known m⁻¹ (Rydberg constant R_∞…Why does hot hydrogen emit a barcode of sharp fixed colours instead of a smooth rainbow — and does the empirical Rydberg constant that indexes that…
• Millikan oil drop: Electric charge is quantized1.5998e-19 measured vs 1.6022e-19 known C (the elementary charge e)Is electric charge a continuous quantity you can have any amount of, or does it come in indivisible lumps — and if so, how big is the lump?
• Photoelectric effect: Einstein's light quantum, re-measured the way Millikan measured it6.6258e-34 measured vs 6.6261e-34 known J·s (Planck's constant…Shine light on a metal and electrons come off. Classical wave theory says brighter light means more energetic electrons, any colour will do if…
• Energy quantization6.0247e-20 measured vs 6.0247e-20 known J — E₁ = h²/(8 m_e L²) =…Why is energy quantized? When a quantum particle is trapped, can it have any energy — and what decides which energies are allowed?
• Rutherford scattering: The atom has a nucleus-3.992 measured vs -4 known dimensionless (log–log…Is the atom's positive charge smeared through it (Thomson's plum-pudding) or concentrated in a tiny core — and how do you tell from how alpha…
• Stern–Gerlach: Space is quantized9.3290e-24 measured vs 9.2740e-24 known J/T (Bohr magneton μ_B)When a magnetic moment is sent through an inhomogeneous field, can it point any direction — a continuous smear on the detector — or only a discrete…
• Quantum tunnelling weighed by the wave itself0.11563352 measured vs 0.11563365 known transmission probability T…Does probability really leak through a barrier taller than the particle's energy at exactly the rate scattering theory claims — and can the…
• Wave interference: Wave speed c = 0.499920 ± 0.000051 cells/step (known 0.5, 1.6e-4) recovered from the emergent…0.49992 measured vs 0.5 knownDrive two in-phase point sources on a membrane that knows ONLY the local rule uⁿ⁺¹ = 2uⁿ − uⁿ⁻¹ + C²∇²uⁿ. Does the classic ripple-tank physics — a…

Gravitation & relativity 8

• Cavendish: Newton's G = 6.674043×10⁻¹¹ (rel −3.8×10⁻⁵ vs CODATA 6.67430×10⁻¹¹, noiseless; 6.6757×10⁻¹¹ ±…Can the absolute strength of gravity — the feeblest fundamental constant, invisible to astronomy (which only ever measures G·M) — be pinned down…
• Gravitational light deflection recovered from a Schwarzschild null geodesic with no deflection…1.7695 measured vs 1.751 known arcsec (deflection of…Newton's own theory, applied to light as a fast corpuscle, bends a ray grazing the Sun by 0.87 arc-seconds (Soldner 1801). Einstein's 1916 General…
• Cosmic-ray muon time dilation: Special-relativistic time dilation γ=1/√(1−β²), recovered from cosmic-ray muon survival…10.2185 measured vs 10.218477 knownA muon's mean lifetime is 2.197 µs, so at β=0.9952 it should travel only β·c·tau0 ≈ 660 m before decaying — yet muons born ~15 km up reach sea level…
• Kepler orbits: validated → validated + honest-module — the derisk now EXECUTES OrbitsModule.ts…39.47187 measured vs 39.478418 known dimensionless (μT²/a³ =…Does Kepler's harmonic law — T² ∝ a³ with the absolute scale 4π²/μ, blind to eccentricity — emerge from Newton's inverse-square force alone, and can…
• Counterfactual gravity answers 'why inverse-square?'1.4142133 measured vs 1.4142136 known dimensionless (Φ/π at p =…In a possible world where gravity is F = −μ/rᵖ instead of inverse-square, do orbits still close — or do they precess at the classical apsidal-angle…
• Gravitational redshift recovered from Einstein's equivalence-principle elevator with no…2.4557e-15 measured vs 2.4551e-15 known fractional frequency shift…Does light climbing away from a mass lose frequency — and if a gravitational field is 'just' a force, how could it shift a light wave at all?…
• Mercury's perihelion recovered from the Schwarzschild geodesic with no precession formula coded42.9806 measured vs 42.98 known arcsec/Julian century…Mercury's perihelion creeps forward 43 arc-seconds per century more than Newtonian planetary perturbations allow — the anomaly Le Verrier found in…
• Three-body problem: The figure-8 three-body choreography weighed blind6.325914 measured vs 6.325914 known dimensionless time (G = m…Does the Chenciner–Montgomery figure-8 — three equal masses chasing each other around a single figure-eight — really close with the period the…

Oscillations & waves 15

• Brachistochrone & tautochrone: The cycloid recovered by a generic minimizer with no cycloid coded2.0070899 measured vs 2.0070899 known s (least descent time A→B…Johann Bernoulli's June 1696 challenge — of all frictionless ramps between a point A and a lower point B, which lets a bead slide down in the least…
• The hanging chain (catenary): The catenary recovered by a generic minimizer with no cosh coded0.8455047 measured vs 0.8455047 known length units (catenary…Jakob Bernoulli's May 1690 challenge — what shape does a uniform flexible chain hanging between two pins take? Galileo had asserted a parabola…
• Coupled pendulums: Two pendulums, one spring, and the textbook's cleanest prediction recovered from raw F=ma15.0597 measured vs 15.059069 known seconds per beat (T_beat =…Do two identical spring-coupled pendulums, integrated as raw F=ma with no normal-mode theory in the code, really beat at the mode splitting T =…
• The double pendulum's two faces from ONE nonlinear rule2.4142132 measured vs 2.4142136 known dimensionless…Does the full nonlinear double pendulum — integrated as raw F=ma with no linearization or normal-mode theory in the code — contain the exact…
• Doppler effect & sonic boom: Doppler & the sonic boom1.4999971 measured vs 1.5 known f′/f ahead of a source…A siren sounds higher approaching and lower receding — but does the shift depend only on how fast source and listener close on each other, or does…
• Drumhead: You cannot tune a drum2.4048256 measured vs 2.4048256 known dimensionless (α_01 =…A plucked string or an organ pipe has a clear pitch; a struck drumhead just gives a 'thud'. Why? Are a circular drum's overtones the harmonic series…
• Foucault pendulum: A pendulum proves the planet turns31.798 measured vs 31.7877 known hours (full swing-plane…Can a swinging pendulum reveal that the Earth turns — without ever looking at the sky? And does its swing plane really turn at the sine-of-latitude…
• Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou recurrence: Energy refuses to thermaliseMake a chain of springs slightly nonlinear and put all the energy in one mode: does the energy spread out and thermalise (equipartition — the equal…
• Solitons: The KdV soliton phase shift1.098552 measured vs 1.0986123 known dimensionless (κ₁Δx₁ =…When two solitons collide, are they just linear wave packets passing through each other (superposition: amplitudes add, no memory), or a genuinely…
• Soliton train: KdV fission — the quantized soliton spectrum from a raw PDE integration: with ONLY u_t +…2.883197 measured vs 2.88 known dimensionless amplitude…What happens to an arbitrary localized pulse dropped into the KdV equation? Inverse scattering (GGKM 1967) makes an exact, parameter-free…
• The Kelvin ship-wake half-angle α = 19.47° (sin α = 1/3) recovered from the deep-water…19.471221 measured vs 19.471221 known degrees — half-angle α of…Why does every boat, duck and pebble-skip drag the SAME V-shaped wake — and why is its half-angle the same whether the boat crawls or races? Kelvin…
• Kuramoto synchronization2.0022 measured vs 2 known critical coupling Kc in…Crickets, fireflies, pacemaker cells and power-grid generators each run at their own natural rhythm — yet whole populations can spontaneously beat…
• The pendulum's anharmonic period recovered by timing the bare equation of motion1.1803406 measured vs 1.1803406 known dimensionless (T(90°)/T₀ =…Galileo asserted (Discorsi 1638, First Day) that a pendulum's swings take the same time 'whether the arc is eighty degrees or two' — isochronism at…
• Lattice vibrations: Phonon dispersion (phonons)2 measured vs 2 known dimensionless ω_max/√(K/m)…How does a wave travel through a CHAIN of atoms rather than a continuum — is sound's ω = ck good at every wavelength, or does the lattice itself…
• Resonance: The driven oscillator does NOT resonate at its natural frequency0.98425098 measured vs 0.98425098 known dimensionless (ω_r/ω₀ at Q…Everyone 'knows' a driven oscillator resonates at its natural frequency — but where does the displacement-amplitude peak of ẍ + γẋ + ω₀²x =…

Chaos & nonlinear dynamics 7

• Chaotic diffusion weighed on the standard map136.272 measured vs 137.21014 known (momentum)²/step —…Does deterministic chaos produce diffusion — does momentum in the kicked rotor's chaotic sea random-walk, and if so is the diffusion coefficient the…
• Fractal dimension: The coin flip that paints a deterministic fractal1.5849625 measured vs 1.5849625 known dimensionless…Does the chaos game — start anywhere, repeatedly jump halfway toward a uniformly-random vertex of a triangle — paint a genuine fractal whose…
• The Hénon–Heiles escape energy 1/6 recovered from the bare equations of motion0.16666667 measured vs 0.16666667 knownHénon and Heiles's 1964 numerical experiment hangs on one number: orbits in V = ½(x²+y²) + x²y − y³/3 stay bound only below the critical energy 1/6…
• Logistic map: Feigenbaum's constant is really in there4.6692012 measured vs 4.6692016 known dimensionless (Feigenbaum…How does a simple map's long-term behaviour depend on its growth rate — and is the rate at which its period-doublings pile up really a UNIVERSAL…
• Lorenz attractor: The butterfly effect is a number and the lab measured it0.905867 measured vs 0.9056 known nats per unit sim time…Can three simple deterministic equations be unpredictable — and how do we measure that? Lorenz's 1963 discovery says nearby atmospheric states…
• Standard map: Chirikov standard map0.97163513 measured vs 0.97163541 known dimensionless kick…A kicked rotor — the simplest Hamiltonian system that can go chaotic — keeps its momentum forever bounded by invariant KAM tori at weak kicks. At…
• Chaotic transport: Accelerator-mode windows weighed on the standard map7.4483836 measured vs 7.4483836 known kick strength K…Where exactly does chaotic transport in the standard map turn anomalous — can the accelerator-mode windows the D(K) curve's superdiffusive spike…

Statistical mechanics & thermodynamics 20

• The adiabatic invariantSlowly tighten the spring under a swinging mass and both its energy and its frequency climb. Is ANYTHING conserved under a slow change of the…
• Buffon's needle measures π NON-CIRCULARLYCan pure randomness measure a constant of pure geometry — π — without circularity? Drop a needle on a ruled floor, count how often it crosses a…
• Carnot engine: Carnot efficiency η = 1 − T_c/T_h, recovered from ∮P dV and unbeaten by any cycle0.5 measured vs 0.5 knownHeat flows from hot to cold — what is the most work an engine can wring from that flow, and what sets the limit?
• Diffusion: Einstein's ⟨r²⟩ = 4Dt recovered from raw random-walk tracks1.879394 measured vs 1.875 knownA particle taking blind, memoryless random steps wanders away from home — but HOW? Einstein's 1905 answer, ⟨r²⟩ = 4Dt in the plane with D fixed by…
• Spatial SIR epidemic: The threshold that isn't ⅓0.5007 measured vs 0.5 known dimensionless (open-bond…Is there a sharp threshold transmissibility T_c above which a local spatial-SIR outbreak becomes a lattice-spanning epidemic, and is it the exact…
• Bak–Sneppen self-organized criticality0.66212 measured vs 0.66702 knownA ring of species each with a random 'fitness', where every step the single least-fit one and its two neighbours are wiped out and reborn random —…
• Galton board: The bell curve's approach speed, read off a Galton board built from nothing but peg-counting-1.49996 measured vs -1.5 known dimensionless (log–log…How fast does the bell curve arrive — and what controls the speed at which a pile of coin flips becomes Gaussian?
• Ising model: The magnet melts at Onsager's number2.267229 measured vs 2.2691853 known J/k_B — Onsager 1944, Tc =…Does a 2-D lattice of spins with only nearest-neighbour alignment and thermal noise have a SHARP critical temperature — and does it sit exactly…
• The Madelung constant M = 1.747565 of rock salt (NaCl) recovered NON-CIRCULARLY from the raw…What single number sets how tightly an ionic crystal like rock salt holds together — the Madelung constant — and can it be recovered by directly…
• Maxwell–Boltzmann gas: Maxwell's 1860 speed law manufactured from collisions alone0.88707 measured vs 0.88622693 known dimensionless (⟨v⟩/v_rms =…Why does a gas of structureless colliding balls always arrange its speeds into the same fixed shape — and why never the reverse?
• Mean free path: Maxwell's √2: in a hard-disk gas the mean free path is λ=1/(√2·n·σ), a factor √2 SHORTER than…How far does a molecule travel between collisions? Clausius (1858) imagined ONE molecule threading a field of frozen targets and got λ=1/(n·σ). But…
• Site percolation: A phase transition with no dynamics at all0.592914 measured vs 0.59274605 known dimensionless occupation…Is there a sharp threshold at which random, independent site occupation suddenly connects across a whole lattice — a phase transition made of pure…
• Perrin: Avogadro's number N_A = R·T/(6πη·a·D), recovered from Brownian motion alone (Perrin /…6.0272e+23 measured vs 6.0221e+23 knownMicron grains in water jiggle endlessly with no force pushing them — Perrin's claim was that this visible jiggle counts the invisible molecules…
• Pólya recurrence0.34053733 measured vs 0.34053733 known dimensionless probability…A drunkard staggering on a grid always finds his way home — does a drunken bird in the air? Does a simple random walk return to its origin, does the…
• Predator–prey: The mean of a boom-bust cycle sits exactly on the balance point2.000001 measured vs 2 known dimensionless population —…Predator and prey populations neither settle nor explode but cycle forever — so what is the AVERAGE population over a cycle, and does it depend on…
• Sandpile: BTW Abelian sandpile2.124489 measured vs 2.125 known grains per site, heights…Every critical point the lab had met (Ising, percolation, logistic, Kuramoto, standard map) required tuning a knob to one magic value. Does a driven…
• Self-avoiding walk: One local rule — never step on yourself — moves a walk to a new universality class, and the…0.74939 measured vs 0.75 known dimensionless (Flory…Does one purely local constraint — a walker that may never revisit a site, the minimal model of a polymer that cannot pass through itself — change…
• Traffic flow: Why a road jams, weighed exactly0.25019 measured vs 0.25 known cars per bond per sweep —…Why does a road jam — and is there a best density at which it carries the most cars?
• The virial theorem reads a force law's exponent off a single orbitKepler's third law reads a period off an orbit. Can a SINGLE bound orbit read off the EXPONENT of the force law that made it — the −1 of gravity…
• 2-D XY model: The Kosterlitz–Thouless transition weighed blind0.8948 measured vs 0.89294 known J/k_B (Hasenbusch 2005…Does a lattice of planar spins with only nearest-neighbour cosine coupling undergo the Kosterlitz–Thouless transition — order destroyed by vortex…

Electromagnetism 11

• Eddy braking: Lenz's law weighed ring by ring0.043945312 measured vs 0.043945313 knownDrop a magnet down a copper tube and it crawls, nothing touching it. Is the brake really the F = −b·v of quantitative Lenz's-law theory — with b =…
• Light IS an electromagnetic wave2.9977e+8 measured vs 2.9979e+8 known m/s (the wave speed…Maxwell's equations describe electricity and magnetism — so why is the speed of a wave they support numerically equal to the speed of light, and…
• E×B drift: no-oracle → validated — Thomson's velocity-selector speed from the Lorentz force…999999.5 measured vs 1000000 known m/s — E×B drift speed v_d…Cross an electric field with a magnetic one and charges march sideways. Does that drift speed depend on the charge or the mass — do heavy and light…
• Faraday's law: Faraday induction0.549924 measured vs 0.55 known A·m² — the dipole moment…Drop a bar magnet through a coil and watch the voltmeter. Before 1831 the reasonable expectation — Faraday's own, through seven years of failed…
• Electrostatics: Gauss's law (2-D)Does the electric flux through a closed loop really COUNT the charge inside it — exactly, and independent of the loop's size, position and shape —…
• AC generator: no-oracle → validated — the dynamo run from the Lorentz force alone: with…157.0989 measured vs 157.07963 known V — the peak EMF ε₀ = N B…Spin a loop of wire steadily in a fixed magnetic field — the machine that makes essentially all of the world's electricity (Pixii 1832, one year…
• Hall effect: validated + honest-module — the sign of electricity read off a voltmeter: with…-7.3413e-11 measured vs -7.3430e-11 known m³/C — free-electron Hall…Run a current through a strip in a magnetic field. Maxwell's Treatise said the magnetic force acts on the CONDUCTOR, not on the current inside it —…
• Cyclotron (magnetism)2.7992e+10 measured vs 2.7992e+10 known Hz — electron cyclotron…A charge in a uniform magnetic field is bent into a circle. Does a faster particle take longer to come around — as it would under gravity, a spring…
• Series RLC resonance1006590.3 measured vs 1006584.2 known Hz — f₀ = 1/(2π√(LC)) of…Wire a coil, a capacitor and a resistor in a loop and drive it — the tuned circuit inside every radio. Does Thomson's resonance frequency f₀ =…
• Parallel LC tank1006588.9 measured vs 1006584.2 known Hz — f₀ = 1/(2π√(LC)) of…Wire the SAME coil, capacitor and loss as the radio's series loop (?world=rlc) but in PARALLEL, and drive the pair with a fixed AC current — the…
• Transformer: no-oracle → validated + honest module — Faraday's 1831 induction ring weighed on…100.143 measured vs 100 known dimensionless — the…Two coils that never touch, wound on one iron core: does the transformer equation V₂/V₁ = N₂/N₁ — plus everything a real transformer does (current…

Optics & light 14

• Airy disk: The 1.22 of every telescope read off raw phasor sums1.2196699 measured vs 1.2196699 known dimensionless sinθ₁·D/λ (=…Why does every circular instrument — telescope, microscope, eye — hit a resolution wall at θ_min = 1.22 λ/D, and can that 1.22, the ring ladder…
• X-ray Bragg diffraction: NaCl interplanar spacing d=2.820 Å recovered from X-ray Bragg diffraction peaks, chained to…2.8201 measured vs 2.8201 known angstrom (NaCl (200)…You cannot see atoms — so how do you measure the distance between the ions in a grain of salt, and could that atomic ruler possibly weigh out a…
• Brewster's angle: A refractive index read off a polarization null1.49993 measured vs 1.5 known dimensionless (refractive…Shine unpolarized light on flat glass: is there an angle where the reflection vanishes for one polarization — and if so, can the glass's refractive…
• Fresnel straight-edge diffraction: The ¼-lit shadow edge, from raw phasor sums0.25 measured vs 0.25 known dimensionless intensity…Straight-edge shadows look sharp — but if light is a wave, what actually happens right at the edge of the shadow, and can a ray/corpuscular picture…
• Diffraction grating: The grating that splits sodium6.0010e-10 measured vs 6.0000e-10 known metres (fed doublet…Add more slits to Young's two — why do soft fringes sharpen into spectral lines, and what sets whether a grating can split two almost-identical…
• The 22° ice halo read off a raw Snell sweep21.8393 measured vs 21.84 known degrees — angular radius…Why does a bright ring of angular radius ≈22° so often circle the Sun or Moon through thin cirrus — the same size whatever the ice, and RED on its…
• Malus's law: The plate that lights a dark field1.99999 measured vs 2 known dimensionless (Malus…Two crossed polarizers pass nothing. Insert a THIRD polarizer between them — can adding an absorber brighten a dark field, and does the whole…
• Mirage / graded-index optics-1 measured vs -1 known dimensionless Bouguer…Drop the sharp interface: let the refractive index vary continuously with height (hot, thin air near a sun-baked road). What does a ray do — and why…
• Newton's rings weigh light with a ruler5.8930e-7 measured vs 5.8930e-7 known m (sodium D-line mean: D2…A plano-convex lens resting on flat glass shows concentric rings with a DARK centre — zero path difference, yet destructive. Do the dark-ring radii…
• Rainbow: Descartes rainbow41.842895 measured vs 41.842896 known degrees from the antisolar…Why does the rainbow sit at 42° from the antisolar point for every observer — and can that angle, the 51° secondary, the dark band between them, and…
• Rayleigh scattering: Rayleigh's λ⁻⁴ law (exponent 4.000) recovered from a driven bound electron3.99989 measured vs 4 known dimensionless power-law…Why is the daytime sky blue and the setting sun red — and can that colour be derived from first principles, without ever assuming the answer?
• Refraction: Fermat → Snell: no-oracle → validated — the bent path, found by a stopwatch: with NOTHING…1.500272 measured vs 1.5 known sinθ₁/sinθ₂ = n₂/n₁ for…Light goes from a point in air to a point in glass. Of all the paths it could take, which does it follow — the straight line, or something else? And…
• Total internal reflection0.7289664 measured vs 0.72972766 known critical angle θ_c =…Send light OUT of glass into air. The refracted ray bends away from the normal and races toward grazing as you steepen the incidence — is there an…
• Young's double-slit: Light weighed on a screen6.3284e-7 measured vs 6.3280e-7 known metres (helium–neon laser…Two slits, one screen: does coherent light really throw an evenly spaced fringe comb obeying d·sinθ = mλ (Δy = λL/d) — Young's 1804 wavelength…

The raw chronological lab log →