## 2. PHYSICS

#### Subsections

- 2. physics - general
- 2.1 physics poetry
- 2.2 physics quotes
- 2.3 physics puns
- 2.4 pseudo physics (cat physics, cartoon physics)
- 2.5 new physical theories
- 2.6 learning physics
- 2.7 not learning physics (featuring Heavy Boots)
- 2.8 physical proofs
- 2.9 physical one-liners
- 2.10 quantum mechanics (starring Schroedingers cat!)
- 2.11 relativity
- 2.12 measure the height of a building with help of a barometer
- 2.13 physicists
- 2.14 astronomy
- 2.15 electrons
- 2.16 electro-magnetism and light
- 2.17 Newtons's laws and classical dynamics
- 2.18 thermodynamics
- 2.19 in the lab
- 2.20 strange but real findings
- 2.21 the buttered bread on cat problem

### 2.2 PHYSICS QUOTES

Index | Comments and Contributions | previous page

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    p.austin@info.curtin.edu.au (Peter Austin)
    "Very strange people, physicists - in my experience the ones who aren't
    dead are in some way very ill"
    -Mr Standish "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul" by Douglas Adams

physics engineering
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena that
    are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to disbelieve
    the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary beliefs of
    physics - H. Bauer

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: Ian Ellis <ian@iglou.com>
    Special Category: Isaac Newton
    Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started
    a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in
    California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble
    of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not
    to us. [clipped from "TheCourier-Journal," Louisville, KY]
      --        Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), American clergyman

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

     ...it would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians
    on earth. - Daniel (no, not Daniel or Jakob) Bernoulli

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Niels Bohr
    From: fcbaer@shentel.net (FRANK)

    FRANK's Quotations for October 7 from Niels Bohr

    Foraging Quote:
    When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
    The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts
    as with creating images.

    Reflecting quote:
    There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.

    Adopting quote:
    It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how
    Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

    Nurturing Quote:
    An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be
    made in a very narrow field.

    % Niels Bohr (1885-1962) born on October 7
    Danish physicist; He was the major contributor for 50 years to
    developing quantum physics and established the Bohr theory of the
    atom.
    (More from Bohr in the miscellany section)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Max Born

    No concealed parameters can be introduced with the help of which the
    indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one.
    Hence if a future theory should be deterministic, it cannot be a
    modification of the present one but must be essentially different.
    -- M. Born (1949)

    In 1952 the impossible was done.  -- John S. Bell, Referring to the Bohmian
    mechanics(Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics, 1987)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Max Born

    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    	If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least
    conceded so much to our imperfect intellects that in order to predict
    little parts of it, we need not solve innumberable differential
    equations, but can use dice with fair success.
    	-- Max Born

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: William Lawrence Bragg

    The electron is not as simple as it looks.
    -- (William) Lawrence Bragg, British Physicist(1890-1971)

[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From:         Susan K <texdove@onr.com>
    I know that this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I never studied
    law.          -Bugs Bunny

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: moloch@starbase.neosoft.com (Anne Voelkel)

    The rules of clockwork might apply to familiar objects such as
    snookerballs, but when it comes to atoms, the rules are those of roulette.
    ---Paul Davies _God and the New Physics_

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    ...physicists, like theologians, are wont to deny that any
    system is in principle beyond the scope of their subject.
    	-- Paul Charles William Davies, _Superstrings: A Theory of
    Everything_

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton)

    Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.
      --     Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of
          television.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: "David R. Palmer" <mrmacro@starband.net>
    Most sweeping understatement of all time...

    Plutonium keeps better in small pieces.
    -- Lester Del Rey,  Day of the Giants (1964), paraphrased.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: kriman@acsu.buffalo.edu (Alfred M. Kriman)

    @A: Dyson, Freeman J.
    @Q:     We have learned that matter is weird stuff.  It is weird enough,
        so that it does not limit God's freedom to make it do what he pleases.
    @R: Ch. 1, p. 8, _Infinite in All Directions: Gifford lectures given at
    Aberdeen, Scotland, April-November 1985_; edited by the author (Harper &
    Row, New York, 1988).

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Paul Dirac
    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    On being asked what he meant by the beauty of a mathematical
    theory of physics, Dirac replied that if the questioner was a
    mathematician then he did not need to be told, but were he not a
    mathematician then nothing would be able to convince him of it.
    	--Freeman Dyson

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Dyson, Freeman:
    The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be
    right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find
    the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of
    the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is
    the overall design.
    "Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". Interview with
    Donald J. Albers, The College Mathematics Journal, vol 25, no. 1, January
    1994.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
    sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
    sheer terror." -- W. K. Hartmann

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Arthur Eddington
    "I am afraid the knockabout comedy of modern atomic physics is not
    very tender towards our aesthetic ideals. The stately drama of
    stellar evolution turns out to be more like the hair-breadth
    escapades in the films. The music of the spheres has a painful
    suggestion of -- jazz."

    -- Arthur S. Eddington, Stars and Atoms, 1926.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Arthur Eddington
    From: "michaelprice" <michaelprice@ntlworld.com>

    "The second law of thermodynamics holds, I think, the supreme position among
    the laws of nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the
    Universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse
    for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation -
    well, those experimentalists do bungle things up sometimes. but if your theory
    is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope;
    there is nothing to do but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

    -- Arthur S. Eddington (British Astrophysicist, 1882-1944) in The nature
    of the Physical World (1928)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Arthur Eddington
    I am standing on the treshold about to enter a room.  It is a complicated
    business.  In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing
    with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body.  I must
    make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round
    the sun - a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be
    miles away.  I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head
    outward in space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how
    many miles a second through every instice of my body.
    -- Arthur S. Eddington (British Astrophysicist, 1882-1944) in The nature
    of the Physical World (1928)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Arthur Eddington
    Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944, British Astrophysicist)
    I believe there are
    15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296
    protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
    The Philosophy of Physical Science. Cambridge, 1939.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: Graham Weeks weeks-g@dircon.co.uk
    Special Category: Albert Einstein
    There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable
    from the atom.
    Albert Einstein (1879--1955) in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A
    brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Albert Einstein
    The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.
             -Albert Einstein  to Heinrich Zangger (May 20, 1912)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Albert Einstein

    The Doctoral student Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider asked Einstein in 1919 how he
    would have reacted if his general theory of relativity had not been
    confirmed experimentally that year by Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson.

    His answer was: "Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord.  The theory is
    correct anyway."

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Albert Einstein
    Two quotes from Albert Einstein:

    The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not  [May 1922 to Oscar Veblen]

    I have second thoughts.  Maybe God *is* malicious [To Valentine Bergman,
    quoted in Sayen, Einstein in America]

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Albert Einstein
    From : tomas_thefox2003@yahoo.ie (Tomás Fuchsbauer)
    As spotted on a post-card in Germany depicting Einstein in old age -
    English translation : (the 'vice versa’ is my personal addition - after
    all the ladies have a similar complaint about the men !)'

    "Some men spend a lifetime in an attempt to comprehend the complexities of
    women (or vice versa).  Others pre-occupy themselves with somewhat simpler
    tasks, such as understanding the theory of relativity !"

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Enrico Fermi
    Fermi was asked what characteristics physics Nobelists had in common.
    He answered, "I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence."
    Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist, 1901-1954 (Phys Today, Oct 1994, pg70)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: cdhiv@aol.com (CDH IV = C. Dodd Harris IV)

    "The next question was - what makes planets go around the sun? At the time
    of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were
    angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an
    orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The
    only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their
    wings push inward."
                         -Richard Feynman _Character Of Physical Law_, p. 8

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: "David C. Kifer" <dkifer@sky-access.com>
    One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them
    today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much.
    - Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: Martin Held <heldm@ucs.orst.edu>
    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    Physics is to Math what Sex is to Masturbation
    	--Richard Feynman

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: kriman@acsu.buffalo.edu (Alfred M. Kriman)

    @A: Feynman, Richard P. (1918-1988)
    @Q:Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are
       the conditions, now what happens next?

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in
    the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince
    you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics
    students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it.
    Nobody does.

    Feynman, Richard P. (1918-1988) b. Far Rockaway, New York
    Richard P. Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Penguin
    Books, London, 1990, p 9. (1) \ Nobel Lecture, 1966

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's
    not why we do it. --Richard Feynman.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the
    proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for
    measuring energy.
    	-- Richard P. Feynman, _ The Character of Physical Law_

mathematics physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicists
    must be at least partially sane.
    	-- J. Willard Gibbs, quoted _The Scientific Monthly_,
    December, 1944

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Niels Bohr
    Special Category: Murray Gell-Mann
    @A: Murray Gell-Mann
    @Q: Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into
    believing that the problem [of the interpretation of quantum mechanics]
    had been solved fifty years ago.
    @R: Acceptance speech Noble Price (1976)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Stephen Hawking
    "My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as
    it is and why it exists at all."
    Stephen Hawking

[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Stephen Hawking
    Scientific discovery may not be better than sex, but the satisfaction lasts
    longer  -- Stephen Hawking (BBC News, January 16, 2002)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Stephen Hawking
    Each equation ... in the book would halve the sales.
     -- Stephen Hawking (1942-..; English theoretical Physicist) in A Brief
    history of time (1988)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: David Metacarpa <dmetacarpa@veeco.com>

                      100 Dr. Hewitt quotes and terminology:

    During the 1994-1995 year, I took theoretical physics I and II, under
    Dr. C. Hewitt. Some classmates started to compile a list of his
    quotes. Read and Enjoy!

    * note - it may help to remember the derivation of something
    * like Bessel's equation(spherical) to enjoy this to it's fullest!

    1) And we can say shazam!, that's what we were hoping for.
    2) recipes
    3) sexy arithmetic
    4) when the smoke clears
    5) always plan ahead
    6) Can I go home now, my brain is full?
    7) zigs and zags
    8) I'm going to have to massage them.
    9) get your jollies
    10) willy nilly
    11) blips
    12) Look at the rabbit in the hall.
    13) Bessel's inequality is cool.
    14) What's that got to do with the price of beans.
    15) playing fast and loose with differentials
    16) The particle can stick it's foot through the door and say "It's pretty
        murky in there." and back off.
    17) mathematical trickery
    18) You can amaze your friends at the next party you go to.
    19) one of a plethora of conditions
    20) Thank God for tender mercies.
    21) circular membrane, that's French for drumhead
    22) Let's everyone get some hairshirts and weat them because it's fun.
    23) suppose I get cute with them
    24) let's sneak up on them
    25) it's a bootstrap proposition
    26) If you think I'm way out in left field, I believe I made a note of that
        here somewhere.
    27) Suppose the guy who built this was not a very good carpenter.
    28) Analytic is French for the derivative will exist.
    29) The world is run by right handed bigots.
    30) Did I answer the question or just dodge it.
    31) that has the unfortunate tendency to explode
    32) At the next party you go to say "Give me a complex function." and
        lickety-split I can tell you if it's analytic or not.
    33) I've got chalk up my nose.
    34) Sympathy is in the dictionary between a crude model of defecation and a
        social disease.
    35) looks apparently marvelous
    36) a really neat suture or gash
    37) and if there is a God in heaven
    38) which I've very cleverly erased here
    39) you have to diddle
    40) You have to pick the right transform tools, you open the drawer and say
        do I want this W or this W.
    41) I put a love note in your mail folder.
    42) It goes to hell in a handbasket.
    43) Lock the door and pull the shades.
    44) It goes on past Canada.
    45) An entirely different kettle of fish
    46) If someone throws this at you and says, "Is this a conservative
        force?", you've got to be eating just the right box of Wheaties to say
        "Ah, yes!"
    47) Now even tourists can study Fourier series.
    48) Unless you enjoy wearing hairshirts and beating yourself with birch
        switches...
    49) You're the one with the egg on your face.
    50) pickle shaped with growth pimples
    51) live in a world without pimples
    52) cigar-shaped coordinates
    53) Call it your Grandmother... I don't care.
    54) You can integrate until the cows come home.
    55) If you have nothing pressing to do over the weekend... there's no point
        in watching the Bills anymore.
    56) What kind of barbarian are you the you worry about numbers.
    57) Massage this!
    58) I'm sure as hell not going to play poker with you people.
    59) Now.... if that offends you.
    60) For those who like to go to a cafeteria, a little of this, a little of
        that.
    61) massage it gently
    62) pick your brains
    63) act of faith
    64) and I can put it in a celluloid and put it in my shirt pocket
    65) If you're looking for beauty in these things, you're a little strange.
    66) It's the difference between putting a quarter in a jukebox and
        conducting a symphony.
    67) Unless you've had a tortured childhood, you haven't looked at Legendre
        functions.
    68) I did not think, I investigated.
    69) e to the blah, blah, blah....
    70) Wait.... I lied!
    71) The mathematicians immediately went into the next room and were
        violently ill.
    72) The druns will get very nervous.
    73) In the complex plane there is only one zit where it is not analytic
    74) Not if you eat your Wheaties and get a good nights sleep.
    75) a quick and dirty number
    76) Evaluate this if you are so smart with your methods.
    77) Analytic is French for Cauchy-Riemann conditions.
    78) Mathematicians are right-handed bigots too.
    79) In terms of differential equations we've seen no more than a decent
        person ought to see.
    80) d to the 0/dz to the 0, is just French for don't take any derivatives.
    81) nonanalyiticity
    82) I'm not burning all my bridges, I'm jumping off the side streams.
    83) which looks apparently marvelous
    84) You can cut them apart and sew the edges together if that upsets you.
    85) A nice printed pat on the head and a thank-you for your attention
    86) The sexier I make the strings of powers of x...
    87) If we're living in the real world...
    88) You're going to go completely drunk because you're nuts with power.
    89) I've left myself a paradox here.
    90) Let's say you have Casper the Ghost, with a bedsheet and a helium-
        loaded basketball underneath.
    91) I'm not really enamored of the illumination provided.
    92) What if it only looks like formica, but it's really pancake batter?
    93) For what value of x will it give you something other than KABOOM!
    94) You should be fairly exhausted by watching me go through these
        gyrations here.
    95) Oh God, there must be gazillions of 'em.
    96) You can start salivating already.
    97) If my brain were functioning...
    98) My brain has to be soaked with caffeine to work
    99) ...and you can say "that's nice, but who cares?"
    100) If you said Legendre to him he would go ape and dance around the room.
    101) The value of sine of theta hasn't been greater than one since World War II
    102) It's pure mathematics. It isn't dirty from having those barbarians
    from engineering and physics playing with it.
    103) you wang it and watch it vibrate
    104) Nobody's looking, close the door so the mathematicians don't hear.
    105) You're going to see this again, no matter how much you hope it will go
         away when I go away.
    106) What would posses anyone to do this when they could be out sitting in
         the grass.
    107) KFC isn't Kentucky Fried Chicken, it's roasted.
    108) If you're not with me, I may as well be talking in Swahili.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    They could but make the best of it, and went around with
    woebegone faces sadly complaining that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and
    Fridays they must lool on light as a wave; on Tuesdays, Thursdays and
    Saturdays, as a particle.  On Sundays they simply prayed.
    	-- Banesh Hoffmann, _The Strange Story of the Quantum_

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Physics is not difficult, it is just weird - Vincent Icke "The Force of
    symmetry" (1994)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: "Keith E. Sullivan" <KSullivan@worldnet.att.net>
    INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE

    "This is the third of four lectures on a rather difficult subject -- the
    theory of quantum electrodynamics -- and since there are obviously more
    people here tonight than there were before, some of you haven't heard the
    other two lectures and will find this lecture almost incomprehensible.
    Those of you who *have* heard the other two lectures will also find this
    lecture incomprehensible, but you know that that's all right: as I
    explained in the first lecture, the way we have to describe Nature is
    generally incomprehensible to us."  --Richard Feynman, from a lecture
    published in the book QED

    Ofer Inbar <cos@cs.brandeis.edu>
    Quote of the Day <qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca>

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Richard Feynman
    From: mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin)

    Near the end of "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.", Feynman is
    demonstrating how all of the other interactions in the Standard Model are
    analogous to the QED interaction (both QCD and weak interactions), and he
    jokes that it's because:

    "physicists can only think the same damn thing over and over."

    (Of course, really, they thought some pretty remarkably different things
    for a while, before the evidence for the astounding parallels started
    coming in. 1960s literature on strong interactions is a baffling swamp
    of bizarre theories.)

    Incidentally, "QED" is an *excellent* popular book on modern physics,
    one of the very best ever written. Also, it's short.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Lord Kelvin/William Thomson
    From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton)

     "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
           Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Lord Kelvin/William Thomson
    X-rays will prove to be a hoax.
           Lord Kelvin, while president of the Royal Society

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Lord Kelvin/William Thomson
    From: Graham Weeks <weeks-g@dircon.co.uk>

    Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief
    history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

    I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other
    than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the
    trials we hear of.'' Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), writing to Baden-Powell in
    1896 in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how
    wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

    Radio has no future. -- Lord Kelvin, 1897, on Marconi's experiments.

    Trust you will avoid the gigantic mistake of alternating current.- Lord
    Kelvin (1824-1907), writing to Niagara Falls Power Company.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Lord Kelvin/William Thomson

    From: Graham Weeks <weeks-g@dircon.co.uk>

    At what point does the dissipation of energy begin?
     - Lord Kelvin's response to his wife's suggestion of an afternoon walk.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: chollanamdo@mindspring.com (The Sanity Inspector)

    Somehow, the energy is extracted from the vacuum and turned into
    particles...Don't try it in your basement, but you can do it.
    	-- University of Chicago cosmologist Rocky Kolb

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: Dennis Parker <dparker@onr.com>
    Probability has turned modern science into a truth casino.
     --Bart Kosko in Fuzzy Thinking (The New Science of Fuzzy Logic)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: c1prasad@watson.ibm.com (prasad)

    What is mind?  No matter.
    What is matter?  Never mind.  - Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
    Punch Vol 29, 19 (1855)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: aephraim@physics5 (Aephraim M. Steinberg)

    To this day, lab directors keep a physics lecture on hand [to disperse
    rabble-rousers]. Let us pray we never need to use it." -- Lederman

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: sichase@csa5.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)

    Physics is not a religion.  If it were, we'd have a much easier time
    raising money. - Leon Lederman

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton)

    "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction
    and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
    He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
      --       1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary
           rocket work.

    From:  John Beaderstadt <beady@together.org> Date:     1999/04/13
    "Correction: It is now definitely established that a rocket can function
    in a vaccuum. The 'Times' regrets the error." NY times, July 1969.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: James Clerk Maxwell

    ... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been
    approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to
    men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of
    decimals.
      -- James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) [Scottish physicist]
    Scientific Papers 2, 244, October 1871.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Jules Henry Poincaré
    Carlyle has somewhere said something like this: " Nothing but facts are
    of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here is something that is
    admirable. Here is a reality for which I would give all the theories in the
    world." Carlyle was a fellow countryman of Bacon; but Bacon would not have
    said that. That is the language of the historian. The physicist would say
    rather: "John Lackland passed by here; that makes no difference to me, for
    he will never pass this way again." -- Henri Poincare

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Wolfgang Pauli

    On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
    "This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
    -- Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian physicist (1900-1958)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Ernest Rutherford
    All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
    -- Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand physicist (1871-1937)
    Winner Nobel prize chemistry!! (1908)
    Source given is JB Birks "Rutherford at Manchester," 1962.
    More Rutherford in Miscellany section

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Ernest Rutherford
    "It was as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a sheet of tissue paper and it
    came back to hit you."
    -- Ernest Rutherford, about the scattering of alpha particles from gold
    foil, which resulted in the discovery of the atom nucleus.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Carl Sagan
    From: creator@islandnet.com (Matt Elrod)

    "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent
    the universe." -- Carl Sagan (US physicist and astronomer,1934-1999)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    From the remark of Sherlock Holmes "It's a capital mistake to theorize
    before you have all the evidence" if follows that astronomers are bad
    detectives.  -- Nick Schutgens, Phd thesis

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. - George Wald

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Wolfgang Pauli
    It was absolutely marvelous working for Pauli. You could ask him anything.
    There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid,
    since he thought all questions were stupid.
     -- Victor Frederick Weisskopf

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Wolfgang Pauli
    Special Category: Albert Einstein

    What Einstein said wasn't all that stupid.

         -- Wolfgang Pauli as a student, after hearing Einstein, 20 years his
         senior give a lecture.

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Who ordered that?
      - Isidor I. Rabi, on the discovery of the muon

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Norbert Wiener
    The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
    and a student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and
    Saturday. On Sunday he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone,
    preferably himself, will find the reconciliation between the two views.
    -- Norbert Wiener

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Eugene Wigner
    From: aephraim@physics5 (Aephraim M. Steinberg)

    WHY must I treat the measuring device classically??  What will happen
    to me if I don't?? - Wigner, Eugene Paul. Hungarian/US physicist (1902-1995)

physics
[Top of page] [Bottom of page] [Index] [Send comment]

    Special Category: Eugene Wigner
    Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and
    longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a
    physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems
    that he is already too old to solve them.
     -- Eugene Wigner

next page | Index | Comments and Contributions

#### Subsections

- 2. physics - general
- 2.1 physics poetry
- 2.2 physics quotes
- 2.3 physics puns
- 2.4 pseudo physics (cat physics, cartoon physics)
- 2.5 new physical theories
- 2.6 learning physics
- 2.7 not learning physics (featuring Heavy Boots)
- 2.8 physical proofs
- 2.9 physical one-liners
- 2.10 quantum mechanics (starring Schroedingers cat!)
- 2.11 relativity
- 2.12 measure the height of a building with help of a barometer
- 2.13 physicists
- 2.14 astronomy
- 2.15 electrons
- 2.16 electro-magnetism and light
- 2.17 Newtons's laws and classical dynamics
- 2.18 thermodynamics
- 2.19 in the lab
- 2.20 strange but real findings
- 2.21 the buttered bread on cat problem

Member of the Science Humor Net Ring
[ Previous 5 Sites | Previous | Next | Next 5 Sites ]
[ Random Site | List Sites ]

Hit Statistics