Timeline of condensed matter physics

This timeline describes the major developments, both experimental and theoretical, of condensed matter physics, which includes theoretical crystallography, solid-state physics, soft matter physics, mesoscopic physics, material physics, low-temperature physics, microscopic theories of magnetism in matter optical properties of matter and metamaterials. Even if material properties were modeled before 1900, condensed matter topics were considered as part of physics since the development of quantum mechanics and microscopic theories of matter. According to Philip W. Anderson, the term "condensed matter" appeared about 1965. For history of fluid mechanics, see timeline of fluid and continuum mechanics. 3000BC – Stone Age: people develop pottery and tools from stone and flint. 3000-500BC – Bronze Age: mixing copper and tin, provided the development of development of bronze tools. 500BC- Iron Age: bronze tools are replaced with iron and steel. 6th century BC – Thales of Miletus observes that rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause an attraction between the two, which is now known to be caused by static electricity. 440 BC – Democritus postulate the atomism philosophy. 384–322 BC - Aristotle describes the composition of elements in terms of Aristotelian physics 1st century AD – Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records the story of a shepherd Magnes who discovered the magnetic properties of some iron stones. 130 AD – Claudius Ptolemy wrote about the properties of light including: reflection, refraction, and color and tabulated angles of refraction for several media 1611 – Johannes Kepler first states the Kepler conjecture about sphere packing in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It states that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling space has a greater average density than that of the cubic close packing (face-centered cubic) and hexagonal close packing arrangements. 1621 – Willebrord Snellius reformulates Snell's law. 1660 – Robert Hooke postulates Hooke's law.