Physical science Quote by Basil Mahon

““In fact, confusion over units was not confined to electricity and magnetism. When two people spoke of a quantity like 'force' or 'power' you could not be sure that they meant the same thing. James saw a prime opportunity to straighten out the muddle. He went beyond his brief for the paper and proposed a systematic way of defining all physical quantities in terms of mass, length and time, symbolised by the letters M, L and T. For example, velocity was defined L/T, acceleration L/T^2, and force ML/T^2, since, by Newton's second law, force=mass x acceleration. His method is used in exactly this form today. Called dimensional analysis, it seems to us so simple and so natural a part of all physical science that almost nobody wonders who first thought of it.””

Basil Mahon

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Physical science

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“One of the things Maxwell learned from his reading was the fallibility of men's efforts to understand the world. All of the great scientists…

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“The new law that he predicted seemed to defy common sense. It was that the viscosity of a gas-the internal frictional that causes drag…

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“The E and H waves always travel together: neither can exist alone. They vibrate at right angles to each other and are always in…

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“His system of equations worked with jewelled precision. Its construction had been an immense feat of sustained creative effort in three stages spread over 9 years. The whole route was paved with inspired innovations but from a historical perspective one crucial step stands out-the idea that electric currents exist in empty space. It is these displacement currents that give the…

Basil Mahon

“Leo Szilard, in 1929, showed that the very act of acquiring information about a system increases its entropy in proportion to the amount of information gathered. As the entropy increases, less of the system's total heat energy is available for doing work. To gather enough information to work the shutter effectively we would have to use up, or render inaccessible,…

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“Maxwell's greatest work shows two unique characteristics which stem from his philosophical insight. The first is the way he could return to a subject, often after a gap of several years and take it to new heights using an entirely fresh approach. He did this twice with electromagnetism. The second is even more remarkable. His electromagnetic theory embodied the notion…

Basil Mahon

“He wrote up the mathematics and everything fitted together. James had shown how the electrical and magnetic forces which we experience could have their seat not in physical objects like magnets and wires but in energy stored in the space between and around the bodies. Electrostatic energy was potential energy, like that of a spring; magnetic energy was rotational, like…

Basil Mahon

“He had made a discovery of the first magnitude. It opened up an entirely new approach to physics, which led to statistical mechanics, to…

Basil Mahon

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“In the Treatise James made an important new prediction from his electromagnetic theory-that electromagnetic waves exert a radiation pressure. Bright sunlight, he calculated, presses…

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“Most creative scientists, even the most prolific and versatile, produce one theory per subject. When that theory has run its course they move on…

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“It sometimes happens that mathematical methods conceived in the abstract turn out later to be so well suited to a particular application that they…

Basil Mahon

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The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same…

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The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science…

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Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry…

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The plain message physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as…

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I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but…

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If you know not what electricity is, or, how it functions, then pressing a switch, and, there being light, will be a 'miracle' to…

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I think we're all fascinated and a little mystified by how the brain works. One of the most mysterious of the physical sciences is…

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Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth…

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a…

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“ Newton supposed that the case of the planet was similar to that of [a ball spun around on the end of an elastic string]; that it was always pulled in the direction of the sun, and that this attraction or pulling of the sun produced the revolution of the planet, in the same way that the traction or pulling…

William Kingdon Clifford

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Physical science Quote by Basil Mahon

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