physics

John Mitchell (physicist)

John Mitchell (physicist) is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Mitchell (physicist) rather than just read about it. In short: John Wesley Mitchell, FRS (3 December 1913 – 12 July 2007) was a New Zealand-born physicist. He was born the son of an American surveyor in Christchurch, New Zealand and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School.

Key takeaways

John Mitchell (physicist) belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Mitchell (physicist) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Mitchell (physicist) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Wesley Mitchell, FRS (3 December 1913 – 12 July 2007) was a New Zealand-born physicist. He was born the son of an American surveyor in Christchurch, New Zealand and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School. Between 1931 and 1935 he studied chemistry and physics at Canterbury University College and was awarded a B.Sc. and M.Sc. In 1935 he sailed to England with an Exhibition Scholarship to take up a fellowship at Oxford University, where he worked under Professor Cyril Hinshelwood at Trinity College. In 1938 he took a post to teach physics at Repton School, but when war broke out he joined the Armament Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal as a Scientific Officer. There he worked on problems related to ammunition, some of which involved the use of high-speed photography. He was later transferred to Fort Halstead in Kent to work in the Theoretical Physics Division on the analysis of shockwaves. At the end of war in 1945 he moved to Bristol to work at the H.H. Wills Physical Laboratory of the University of Bristol. After a period studying deposited metal surfaces, he took the opportunity in 1948 to undertake a Kodak sponsored investigation into the behaviour of thin-sheet crystals of silver halides, a field of research that would dominate the rest of his career. In 1956 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for "his work on the borderline between physics and chemistry about the adsorption of gases on surfaces, on catalysis and on the processes occurring in photographic emulsions. With the latter end in view he has investigated in some detail the properties of silver halide crystals; he was the first to demonstrate networks of dislocations in a transparent crystal by making silver precipitate along them so that they become visible under the microscope. He has also shown by careful experimental work the role of the dislocations in providing sensitivity centres and their relation to such sensitisers as silver bromide. He has shown why the grains of the emulsions grow in a plate-like form with the octahedral faces exposed, and demonstrated the presence in such crystals of three dislocations meeting in a point, which determines the crystal form." In 1959 he took up the offer of a professorship at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he continued his studies of crystal dislocations until his retirement as Professor in 1979 and as Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow in 1995. His tenure as Professor was broken in 1963 when he briefly returned to the UK to take up a position as Director of the National Chemical Laboratory, only for the NCL to be closed down the following year. He died in 2007. He had married three times but had no children.

Honours and awards 1955 Awarded C.V. Boys Prize (now known as the Moseley Medal and Prize) of the Institute of Physics 1956 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 1994 Awarded Progress Medal (RPS) of the Royal Photographic Society

References

External links Biography of Mitchell by Roger Kelly

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Mitchell (physicist)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Mitchell (physicist) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Mitchell (physicist) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Mitchell (physicist) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Mitchell (physicist)

In research: John Mitchell (physicist) appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Mitchell (physicist) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Mitchell (physicist) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1913 births, 2007 deaths, 20th-century British physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Mitchell (physicist) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Mitchell (physicist) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Mitchell (physicist) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Mitchell (physicist) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Mitchell (physicist) in simple terms?

Why does John Mitchell (physicist) matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Mitchell (physicist)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Mitchell (physicist).