A History of Physics in Its Elementary Branches: Including the Evolution of Physical LaboratoriesMacmillan, 1899 - 322 pages |
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Popular passages
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 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 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 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 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 72 - We took then a long glass -tube, which, by a dexterous hand and the help of a lamp, was in such a manner crooked at the bottom, that the part turned up was almost parallel to the rest of the tube, and the orifice of this shorter leg of the siphon (if I may so call the whole instrument) being hermetically sealed, the length of it was divided into inches (each of which was subdivided into eight parts) by a straight list of paper, which containing those divisions, was carefully pasted all along it.
Page 113 - I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder.
Page 73 - ... mercurial cylinder in the longer leg that compressed the air into those dimensions. C. The height of the mercurial cylinder that counterbalanced the pressure of the atmosphere. D. The aggregate of the two last columns, B and C, exhibiting the pressure sustained by the included air. E. What that pressure should be according to the hypothesis that supposes the pressures and expansions to be in reciprocal proportion.
Page 62 - And when the Newtonian philosophy gained ground in Europe, it was the opinion of Cotes rather than that of Newton that became most prevalent, till at last Boscovich propounded his theory, that matter is a congeries of mathematical points, each endowed with the power of attracting or repelling the others according to fixed laws.