Saturday, October 17, 2009

Physics Quote of the Day (October 11 - October 17)

"...the ultimate objective of teaching physics is promoting a sound physical thinking and not merely tackling a list of topics." Győző Zemplén, born 17 October 1879.

"Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can understand." John Polkinghorne, born 16 October 1930.

"Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension." C. P. Snow, born 15 October 1905.

"We don't want support for scientific research just to keep scientists busy: we want scientists to be looked upon by the public as people who can do things for them that they can't do themselves." J. C. McLennan, born 14 October 1867.

"Opinions derived from long experience are exceedingly valuable, and outweigh all others, while they are consistent with facts and with each other; but they are worse than useless when they lead, as in this instance, to directly opposite opinions." Peter Barlow, born 13 October 1776.

"It frequently happens that a great discovery supplies the wanting links between a number of obscure facts, and thus adds quite as much to our knowledge by its indirect bearings as by the positive additions it makes to the general stock." Josiah Cooke, born 12 October 1827.

"Should there really be suns in the whole infinite space, they can be at approximately the same distance from one another, or distributed over galaxies, hence would be in infinite quantities, and consequently the whole sky should be as bright as the sun. Clearly, each line which can conceivably be drawn from our eye will necessarily end on one of the stars and each point on the sky would send us starlight, that is, sunlight." Heinrich Olbers, born 11 October 1758.

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