A History of Physics in Its Elementary Branches: Including the Evolution of Physical Laboratories

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Macmillan, 1899 - 322 pages
 

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Page 61 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
Page 191 - It is hardly necessary to add, that any thing which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance...
Page 193 - The immediate cause of the phenomena of heat then is motion, and the laws of its communication are precisely the same, as the laws of the communication of motion.
Page 237 - I am busy just now again on electro-magnetism, and think I have got hold of a good thing, but can't say. It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labour, I may at last pull up.
Page 125 - Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing.
Page 13 - For hitherto the proceeding has been to fly at once from the sense and particulars up to the most general propositions, as certain fixed poles for the argument to turn upon, and from these to derive the rest by middle terms: a short way, no doubt, but precipitate; and one which will never lead to nature, though it offers an easy and ready way to disputation.
Page 205 - ... if there was no dust there would be no fogs, no clouds, no mists, and probably no rain, and that the supersaturated air would convert every object on the surface of the earth into a condenser on which it would...
Page 59 - In 1685 he completed his discovery by showing that the sphere whose density at any point depends only on the distance from the centre, attracts an external particle as though its whole mass were concentrated at the centre.1 It was thus proved that the force of attraction between two spheres is the same as it would be if the mass of each sphere were concentrated at its centre. "No sooner...
Page 62 - The pressure per unit of area exerted anywhere upon a mass of liquid is transmitted undiminished in all directions, and acts with the same force upon all surfaces, in a direction at right angles to those surfaces.
Page 122 - Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in "these particulars: 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. "3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Sub"sisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes "through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals, "11. Firing inflammable substances. 12.

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