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Ernst Mach
Born in Chrlice, Czech Republic. Throughout his career he made major contributions to physics, philosophy and physiologic physiology. -
Educational Beginnings
In his personal life Mach, was homeschooled until the age of 14 when he then went to a public school for 3 years until he went to the University of Vienna at the age of 17, in 1855. -
Mach Bands
Ernst Mach made his discovery of Mach Bands in 1865. Mach bands is defined as an optical illusion where our perception of a dark object next to a light object will over process the borders where the two colors contrast. In turn our perception will under process where the color remains consistent. Ersnt believed "Sensations by themselves can have no organic meaning; only the relations of sensations to one another can have meaning (Pojman, 2011)." -
Optical Illusion
Link text Click on link for video of optical illusion, that help illustrate Mach Bands -
Mach Numbers
The relation ship between the speed of an object divided by the speed of sound. Possibly one of his more well known discoveries as, we know it now a days when you watch a military movie and you see a fighter aircraft going "mach 5" -
Mach Numbers Explained
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Analysis of Sensations
He is known as one of the founders of neural networks in the brain with his work of sensations in his Analysis of Sensations. One of his discoveries with the analysis of sensations originated with the Gestalt Theory. Mach believe that the ability to hear a certain melody lied on our ability to recognize the sounds from one and other. This differed from Gestalt’s theory that a melody was a construction of sound vibrations (Pojman, 2011). -
Contribution to Philosophy
Most notably his contributes focused on his criticism of Newton and Newton's Laws, but also atoms. -
Retirement
Mach suffered a severe stroke in 1898 and later retired in 1901, however for Mach retirement did not me retirement. He continued writing, experimenting and replying to correspondence (heuenemann, 1997) -
Death
