Almost everybody is familiar with Hooks Law if they have used a spring balance to weigh anything Weight proportional to extension linear Message 1 Posted by Dermod U14282701 on Sunday 12th December 2010 ID: 413679
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Slide1Slide2
http://www.enasco.com/c/science/Measurement/Spring+Scales/Economy+Spring+Scales/
Almost everybody is familiar with Hook’s Law if they have used a spring balance to weigh anything
Weight proportional to extension - linearSlide3
Message 1.
Posted by Dermod (U14282701)
on Sunday, 12th December 2010 Slide4
Message 1.
Posted by Dermod (U14282701)
on Sunday, 12th December 2010 I have just been listening to 'Moments of Genius'
www.bbc.co.uk/progra... and lo and behold the first moment belongs to Robert Hooke (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) who, in 1660 first related a physical observation to a mathmatical
formula, the law of elasticity that relates the extension of a spring to the force applied to it.Slide5
Message 1.
Posted by Dermod (U14282701)
on Sunday, 12th December 2010 I have just been listening to 'Moments of Genius'
www.bbc.co.uk/progra... and lo and behold the first moment belongs to Robert Hooke (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) who, in 1660 first related a physical observation to a mathmatical
formula, the law of elasticity that relates the extension of a spring to the force applied to it.
Now Hooke was a clever chap and deservedly famous but by what
feat of ignorance did the BBC and their men of little knowledge
manage this howler?Slide6
A few seconds thought will reveal to the
averagely educated that Johannes Kepler worked out, in 1602, that the orbit of Mars was not a circle and, by extension nor was the orbit of any planet but all were ellipses. Not only did he work this out but he showed how to relate the different orbits of the planets.Slide7
A few seconds thought will reveal to the averagely educated that Johannes
Kepler worked out, in 1602, that the orbit of Mars was not a circle and, by extension nor was the orbit of any planet but all were ellipses. Not only did he work this out but he showed how to relate the different orbits of the planets.
The thing about Kepler of course was that:
he was a foreigner, he was not a member of
the Royal Society. Slide8
A few seconds thought will reveal to the averagely educated that Johannes
Kepler worked out, in 1602, that the orbit of Mars was not a circle and, by extension nor was the orbit of any planet but all were ellipses. Not only did he work this out but he showed how to relate the different orbits of the planets.
The thing about Kepler of course was that:
he was a foreigner, he was not a member of
the Royal Society
.
These are of course vital matters when you have
neither knowledge nor curiosity
about a given matter.Slide9Slide10
A few seconds thought will reveal to the averagely educated that Johannes
Kepler worked out, in 1602, that the orbit of Mars was not a circle and, by extension nor was the orbit of any planet but all were ellipses. Not only did he work this out but he showed how to relate the different orbits of the planets.
The thing about Kepler of course was that 1/ he was a foreigner, 2/ he was not a member of the Royal Society. These are of course vital matters when you have neither knowledge nor curiosity about a given matter.
May I ask for other suggestions for mathematical formulations of physical phenomena that anticipate Hooke? All suggestions welcome!Slide11
http://www.enasco.com/c/science/Measurement/Spring+Scales/Economy+Spring+Scales/
Basically the extension of the spring is proportional to the weight added. So:Slide12
http://www.enasco.com/c/science/Measurement/Spring+Scales/Economy+Spring+Scales/
Basically the extension of the spring is proportional to the weight added. So:
I
f it extends 1 cm then you have added 10
gmsSlide13
http://www.enasco.com/c/science/Measurement/Spring+Scales/Economy+Spring+Scales/
Basically the extension of the spring is proportional to the weight added. So:
I
f it extends 1 cm then you have added 10
gms
If it extends 2 cm then you have added 20
gms
etc
I meant when the equation
F = –
kx
was actually written downSlide14
Posted by
Dermod (U14282701)
on Sunday, 12th December 2010 I have just been listening to 'Moments of Genius' www.bbc.co.uk/progra...
and lo and behold the first moment belongs to Robert Hooke (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) who, in 1660 first related a physical observation to a mathmatical formula, the law of elasticity that relates the extension of a spring to the force applied to it.Now Hooke was a clever chap and deservedly famous but by what feat of ignorance did the BBC and their men of little knowledge manage this howler?
A few seconds thought will reveal to the averagely educated that Johannes
Kepler
worked out, in 1602, that the orbit of Mars was not a circle and, by extension nor was the orbit of any planet but all were ellipses. Not only did he work this out but he showed how to relate the different orbits of the planets.
The thing about
Kepler
of course was that 1/ he was a foreigner, 2/ he was not a member of the Royal Society. These are of course vital matters when you have neither knowledge nor curiosity about a given matter.
May I ask for other suggestions for mathematical formulations of physical phenomena that anticipate Hooke? All suggestions welcome!
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Posted by
Robert Carnegie
(U982882)
on Tuesday, 14th December 2010
Wikipedia dates
Kepler's
third law to publication in 1619. Otherwise - perhaps some statement about Hooke has been garbled, or for some reason astronomy doesn't count.
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Tuesday, 14th December 2010
I think
Kepler
might have, like Newton, described the relations which he discovered in words. Hooke used a mathematical equation using mathematical symbols.
This seems a small difference today but wasn't then. It has always struck me as quite extraordinary how we date mathematical symbols and their 'inventors' although the concepts must have existed for centuries before
eg
plus or equal.
I wonder what we are missing today that will be viewed in the same way a century hence. Of course we don't know, by definition!
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
You are all miles out!
Archimedes jumped out of his bath shouting eureka, because he had formulated density. You have to divide to make the link, call it what you like, its a mathematical equation. And all that was around 200BC!
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
I think
Kepler
might have, like Newton, described the relations which he discovered in words.
Newton was a contemporary of Hooke, they were bitter rivals. Newton, president of the Royal Society, used his position, like a number of his successors, to suppress the works of his rivals.
Kepler
was far in advance of using verbal descriptions, as was Newton.
Kepler
determined that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse by
analysing
Tycho
Brache's
plottings
of the position of Mars which he had made with unprecedented accuracy.
Imagine the task, you are on Earth a moving body with and
undefied
path through space and you are plotting the orbit of another planet with only observations from Earth to help you - truly amazing.
Because there was so much calculation involved
Kepler
used logarithms to keep the task (relatively) simple.
I don't really see how Archimedes invented a
formula,no
doubt the Greeks knew how to calculate volumes of solids. Perhaps Archimedes may be regarded as inventor of the analogue computer
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
F = gM1M2/
rsq
does not appear in Newton's Principia.
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Posted by
handsomefortune
(U2927651)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
> F = gM1M2/
rsq
<
is that a typo
rc
- as suddenly all the experts have departed!?
;@.
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
d=m/v, density equals mass over volume, was good enough in 200 BC and good enough for my school
maths
teacher. Has something changed?
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
hsf
: no typo
habb
: we are not discussing ideas or concepts but methods of representation.
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
habbs
200 BC! There was a 1757 year wait for = to appear.
As I explained earlier it does seem remarkable
tha
extremely intelligent people could survive so long without what we now think of as simple and obvious developments. They obviously weren't.
Nice that it was a Welsh invention:
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
Well Archimedes must have expressed it in language, and he must have had a calculating and representational system to do the arithmetic of dividing mass and volume, so we may not know exactly what he wrote but we have to admit he must have written something. How can you solve d=m/v. or think about it without either language or notation. Like Roman arithmetic later, we just don't know how they did it!
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
Well,
habbs
I think you are missing the point but as long as you are happy........
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
I thought we were musing about when was the first time an event in the real world was captured by a notation system. I
realise
we had to wait for the common use of the zero, or place significant numbers or the equals sign, but my point is, if ancient mathematicians, were handling things like simple equations, and drawing conclusions based on calculations that involved numbers greater than the very simple, and we know they did, then they must have a system.
How did Archimedes explain what he had done to the king, and to the court that nicked the
jeweller
, by quoting a holy book?, by reciting a spell?, no, he must have been able to explain and represent what he was thinking and what he had done, in the particular case, with real numbers of units of weight and so forth, supported by the general case inherent in the relationship, that proved his method.
I'm not arguing I can claim my £5 and go home, because I do not know what he did or said, I only know he must have done it.
That the texts have not come down to us, and we have no other sources that give insight is a shame, but our ignorance of their times, does not mean they were just guessing helplessly. Can you imagine if Principia had been lost and all we knew of Newton was his laws, and other matters, just described in language, by others, could we just assume he was lucky, and had not invented the methods and notations?
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
I do not see how the absence of a mathematical language implies guessing.
The evidence HAS come down to us; in Principia there is a paragraph written by Newton explaining his gravity theory, lots of words, not a mathematical sign or symbol in sight. As an aside, he did use lots of
labelled
diagrams.
The point in
theoriginal
programme
was that Hooke expressed his finding in mathematical language, not that he knew it, discovered it, understood it or explained it to others. That was a major advance which has been of enormous value to those who followed him.
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
RCW. I'm not trying to make debating points, I would just like to know what you think Archimedes was doing.
It's hard to believe that the Romans could run such a large empire for so long, design water lifting wheels and get thousands of tons of rock moved and cut, and pay the wages, and all the rest of it, having been unable to easily even multiply, let alone divide; they must have had a system.
I'm just taking the same reasoning to 200BC. But what's your guess? As far as I know what they did has been lost.
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
I'm sure they all had 'a system' but not the one used in mathematics today.
I think you are underestimating the enormous power and utility of our present (almost international) system.
You are also underestimating what an arduous journey it has been to get to our present system with lots of diversions along the way. In fact, for historical reasons, there are still two systems of showing differentials.
If you were to read about the various conventions used to indicate powers/indices alone, you would see why these matters are not simple.
Many symbols are in fact derived from words, so = comes from
ae
which was the Latin abbreviation (not Welsh!).
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
0) It is extremely unfair to harangue the BBC on this matter - This person should target their complaints towards me. The BBC is doing a great job in presenting this series and inevitably must depend on "so-called" experts. Quite a lot of people are under the impression that Nobel Laureates are experts. Well they may be so in some areas but they are not by any means infallible.
00) However the complaint is not fair because I actually addressed much deeper scientific issues relating to the "understanding" of scientific principles involved in the equation and the person I chose. Here are my reasons:
1) First of all it was highly edited down and many salient observations I made had (necessarily) to be omitted and a great job was done by the editor. In particular somewhere in the interview - I said that it was ONE of the first examples of the application of an equation during the period Galileo/
Tycho
Brahe/
Kepler
onwards.
2) However - The main reason I chose it was because it was a) extremely simple and b) I think it is one of the most fundamental relations (and I would argue it is THE most fundamental) in the whole of SET. It has amazingly wide application in the physical sciences,
eg
: It applies to any physical system that is displaced from its equilibrium state.
So it apples to a plethora of systems
eg
: Pan balances; pendulums, watch springs and crystal oscillators; the vibrations of a
drumskin
, violin strings
etc
all musical instruments; oscillations of bridges
eg
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which collapsed, the
Millenium
Bridge, diving boards
etc
; vibrations of molecules such as CO2 involved in the greenhouse gas effect and fingerprinting in analytical chemistry; Oscillations of stars
etc
etc
etc.
3) It results in oscillatory
behaviour
known as the Simple Harmonic Oscillator (SHO) - almost the first thing taught in the first physics lesson at school.
4) Interestingly the SHO was the first system which Heisenberg used to test the validity of his version of Quantum Mechanics
yileding
the crucial result of zero point energy.
5) Of course I was aware of
Kepler
and his conclusion (based on
Tycho
Brahe's measurements) that the planets moved in elliptical orbits. However, this was a purely empirical observation. As far as I can tell he did not know the physical basis of the geometric conclusion he had made. Basically he did not understand the significance of the relations.
6) Hooke knew the physical basis of his equation
eg
F = -
kx
where F is the force applied
k force constant
x displacement
7) Most importantly AND SIMPLY I was able to explain the way in which science advances:
a) Propose physical hypothesis to explain a phenomenon
eg
the x extension of a spring is proportional to the applied force, F.
b) Then describe this observation by a mathematical equation F= -
kx
c) Test the hypothesis by further experiment
eg
if the extension is say 1cm when 10gm weight is on the pan then it should be 2cm when 20
gm
on the pan - so proving the formula works well (at least well enough to make a cake) and the hypothesis is validated and thus it becomes a LAW - in this case Hooke's Law.
PS just in case the commentator wants to make a further point - I have assumed a harmonic system
ie
small amplitude - I do know about this!
6) For what it is worth - and I think a lot!!!! - especially in the case chosen by this person to harangue the BBC!!!In (I think) about 1660 Hooke wrote a letter to Newton suggesting: "ALL bodies were attracted to one another by a force following an inverse square law" and he asked Newton whether he thought this could explain planetary motion
ie
Kepler's
observations?!!!!!"
7) So I would give 99% of the credit for Newton's "fame" to Robert Hooke. Thus one might even argue the Newton was not really a physicist but a "journeyman!!!" mathematician. This might explain Newton's poor record in chemistry!!! and the fact that he missed
recognising
the wave nature of light. NB It was not possible prior Planck and in particular the photoelectric effect to deduce wave particle duality. -
8) It is for these reasons that I claim Hooke was one of the FOUNDERS of "MODERN" SCIENCE. Observation is one thing (arguably common sense) ... "understanding" is something else...arguably "Uncommon Sense"
eg
Science. I chose Hooke's Law as I have been searching for the birthday of Modern Science and in this context I distinguish absolutely between "Empirical observation" and "Scientific Understanding" - I thought this was clear - but perhaps not!
9) It is important to note the fact that the request for your BBC interview came at the same time that I was really trying understand why "Modern Science" did not take off with the Greeks (say with Archimedes - who certainly had an understanding of the density/volume relationship or later say the Chinese, Indians or Persians). I have already discussed Archimedes with a colleague and my argument for the
Galileao
, Hooke, Newton
etc
period, and Hooke in particular, must be seen in the context of my view that empiricism (which is as old as the hills) is not really science. I am looking at equations or relationships that advance our deeper understanding of the ways that physical and natural world work.
10) Also re the somewhat snide remark re the Royal Society and the fact that
Kepler
was not a fellow one might note that
Kepler
died in 1630 and the Royal Society was not really founded until 1660!
11) according to:
www-groups.dcs.st-an...
over 1/3 of the FRSs during 1663 – 1749 were non-British
Harry
Kroto
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Wednesday, 15th December 2010
Thankyou
Mr
Kroto
. It is a very rare treat to hear from the creator of the
programme
we are discussing on these boards.
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
If it was a problem with BBC editing then this (should be) the right place to raise the matter and I hope you get some kind of response. But that only adds to the weight of my OP.
Thank you for expanding on your reasons for choosing Robert Hooke; he was a man of remarkable achievement. However citing SHM and subsequent developments does nothing to diminish prior claims for
Kepler
.
Kepler's
orbits were a remarkable discovery because he used data gathered by
Tycho
Brache
but rejected by him 'because they did not fit the current (Copernican) view that orbits were perfection - circles!
Kepler's
calculations were extraordinarily complicated and when finally he came to publish his work, Brahe's family tried to block it, claiming intellectual property rights over Brahe's work. It took
Kepler
9 years to establish his right to the measurements.
My remarks about the Royal Society were not snide; the RS has a long history of using its position to suppress work or claim ownership of inventions for its members. An
outstandong
example of this is a paper od kinetic theory submitted by John
Herapath
in 1820. No less a personage than Sir Humphrey Davy rejected it on his own advice. This of course was not particularly evil but retaining the copy and the copyright was extremely evil.
This 'nice little job' by a "Sir Humphrey" of the day, so to speak, fully
characterises
the purpose of the RS.
Even today the RS is trying to push scientific research in directions it sees as being most profitable. It is an "
adivisor
" to the Government on the dispersal of research grants. To this end it has "Policy Publications"
royalsociety.org/Pol...
where applicants may to inform themselves about
favoured
research. A fine example is Climate change: A Summary of the Science
royalsociety.org/cli...
where a small number of 'researchers' at the RS has decided which science gets government funding.
This last document was so heavily biased in its first edition it had to be substantially revised. However, if you read it, you will soon discover what will get the grant money and scientific curiosity is definitely 'off menu'.
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Ah I accidently omitted to mention that
Kepler's
orbits are as good an example of harmonic motion as you will find; he explains the period and the amplitude with beautiful simplicity.
Kepler
did not, as far as I have been able to determine,
realise
that his orbits are a superb example of the conservation of energy, the energy of the planet orbit changing regularly from kinetic to potential, once every cycle, just the same principle as Hooke's SHM.
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Posted by
Portly
(U1381981)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
An interesting thing about Hooke was that Newton hated him.
There are no portraits of Hooke in existence, and the suspicion is that Newton destroyed any that there ever were. So we don't even know what Hooke looked like!
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Well, Portly, there's nothing new about
clebrity
gossip.
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Dear
Dermod
1) Re your original statement: "The thing about
Kepler
of course was that 1/ he was a foreigner, 2/ he was not a member of the Royal Society. These are of course vital matters when you have neither knowledge nor curiosity about a given matter." Part of my original response to the first comment of these two of yours was only to point out that over 1/3rd of FRSs were foreign in the period about 1662 onwards and that
Kepler
had been dead for 30 years when the society was inaugurated
ca
1660. These facts suggest that your second sentence actually applies to your lack of "knowledge (n)or curiosity about a given matter".
2) Your point about
Kepler
is of course correct…in so far as it goes. However in my last comment I was at pains to point out a much deeper scientific difference between
Kepler's
Laws and Hooke's Law.
Kepler's
Law was (only!) an accurate mathematical description of the orbits – indeed purely an empirical conclusion based on
Tycho
Brahe's very accurate measurement.
Kepler
did not make the crucial "scientific leap" that Hooke made to understand why the orbits were as they were. Again I point out that it was Hooke who asked Newton whether an inverse square force law could explain them. I would thus argue that Hooke's Law is - from a fundamental scientific point of view –
ie
a “Theory of Everything” point of view – a major jump on from
Kepler
'. This is actually THE fundamental paradigm shift in the development of scientific method that I was trying to explain and it seems to have occurred somewhere between Galileo and Hooke. Thus Hooke's Law is a much more "fundamental" equation and is of quite a different kind - relating measurable physically significant parameters such as forces to distances and masses – not merely a description of positions with empirical constants such as
a,b,c
in the elliptic equation - albeit accurately but with no "apparent" meaning. The equivalent for Hooke would be just to describe the x/t variation of position of the mass on an oscillating spring pan balance. This in itself would tell us nothing fundamental about the Laws of Nature
ie
WHY the mass moves with SH motion. Indeed what scientific conclusion about physics can we draw from
Kepler’s
equation alone? – It was Newton who showed that Hooke’s inverse square hypothesis was confirmed by the elliptical orbits.
Kepler
was in this sense just an accurate measurer and not a modern scientist who seeks understanding from the measurements they have made. I would argue that this places Hooke incomparably above
Kepler
– indeed a true modern scientist as opposed to an observer making an accurate graph of the observed data.
Kepler’s
Laws are useful in predicting when Jupiter will next appear in a particular position in the sky but not useful in calculating the orbit of an orbiting satellite.
Let me site an interesting example from our work. In 1984 carbon was
vapourised
and a strong(
ish
) signal was observed for a carbon species with 60 atoms. In 1985 some 17 months later we redid this experiment for quite a different reason and made the same observation. We were diverted to focus on why it was so strong and our conclusions led to the discovery of a new form of carbon. The previous workers just sited the observation and did not focus on the 60 atom clue that was before their very eyes!
I also add the famous example that although Fleming made an observation - it was Florey, Chain and
Heatley
who ten years later developed penicillin as a powerful medical weapon. In this sense Fleming also was merely an observer and arguably made no "scientific" advance himself as he did nothing with his discovery. I understand it was Chain who drew attention to the observation when Florey was searching for a weapon against blood poisoning as the WWII started.
3) Your original comment about the Royal Society was - for the reasons given in my point 1) not correct and even so had nothing to do with the Hooke issue. I thus find it most odd that the main part of your second blog is an even-more-angry diatribe about the RS and even less relevant to the
Kepler
vs
Hooke issue. I had already agreed that you had a point about
Kepler
and it has been useful for me to detail my reasons for choosing Hooke. Your further discussions about
Kepler's
accuracy
etc
are informative but also do not add anything worthwhile to the scientific discussion.
Furthermore you seem mainly to have a “bee in your bonnet” about the RS and I should have thought there were much more effective sites on which to vent your anger. I too have had one or two issues with the society and have taken these up directly with the Council of the Society. If you would write directly to me with a set of coherent and well-researched arguments - or at least better researched than your comment in 1! - I should be prepared to pass them on to a senior FRS fellow for consideration.
4) Finally the BBC has asked many eminent scientists to participate in this exercise and if mine is the only one with which you taken exception they should be applauded in their efforts. As we have seen this has been an interesting discussion on a complex topic and I hope we have all advanced our understanding. However I think it is only fair to add that in 3 minutes it is impossible to go into the detailed reasons over why I chose Hooke rather than
Kepler
or indeed Archimedes. I applaud your efforts to try to get things right but please note that your efforts should not be couched in so violently negative terms. They should be more positive as is the case with other bloggers in this set. Science gets so little air time that when it does get a look-in, highly negative complaints such as yours
eg
… “Why does the BBC bother…” can only give further fuel to idiots like Billy Connolly and Simon Jenkins who think there is already too much science - the culture that
createdd
the modern world - out there. Surely a much better response on your part would have been something like: "There is much room for discussion on this topic and there is good reason to consider the case of
Kepler
and Archimedes and the BBC should consider giving this great series more time. At least 6-10 minutes per topic would help non-scientists immeasurably to appreciate the fascinating, intellectual and cultural issues underpinning the sciences (such as those we have “discussed”!) - a most worthy educational aim.
Sincerely
Harry
Kroto
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
I would just like to say, that as you have the ear of the BBC, that you ask them to consider re-instating the recently removed Science Message Board, a great loss, as it attracted and stimulated public debate from all levels.
As to Archimedes, I take your points; hopefully he can get a plug somewhere for his work on pi for example, an astonishing mind and life, given his pre-
scientifc
. period.
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Thank you for your response
I suspect you are not a regular
contributer
but the remarks about
Kepler
being a foreigner was indeed flippant, it was designed to stimulate the response from those who are unable to detect irony.
You wrote:-
"
Kepler
did not make the crucial "scientific leap" that Hooke made to understand why the orbits were as they were."
No indeed he didn't. Does that diminish his achievement? Read here what Einstein had to say about him:-
"In anxious and uncertain times like ours, when it is difficult to find pleasure in humanity and the course of human affairs, it is particularly consoling to think of the serene greatness of a
Kepler
.
Kepler
lived in an age in which the reign of law in nature was by no means an accepted certainty. How great must his faith in a uniform law have been, to have given him the strength to devote ten years of hard and patient work to the empirical investigation of the movement of the planets and the mathematical laws of that movement, entirely on his own, supported by no one and understood by very few! ..."
If I was thinking in your way I would be saying Hooke was only a minor figure "because he failed to
recognise
the great truths behind general relativity".
You wrote:-
"Furthermore you seem mainly to have a “bee in your bonnet” about the RS and I should have thought there were much more effective sites on which to vent your anger. "
If not a founder member of the RS, by 1661 he certainly was playing a significant role in its development; it was an exciting, cutting edge
organisation
. By 1820 the RS saw its responsibility as being to suppress contributions it didn't want to see the light of day.
Currently the RS is a government agency with extraordinary powers of patronage and an overwhelming desire to please its sponsor who returns the compliment with appropriate largesse. As the old expressions go "Follow the money" and "Sic transit
gloria
mundi".
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Dear
Habbsing
I shall pass on this excellent suggestion on to the BBC as best I can - though I have had very little influence in the past - As an example my numerous attempts to point out that "Thought for the Day" should not be
monopolised
by individuals whose power rests entirely on belief without evidence met a brick wall of silence - every time.
Re Archimedes - He is considered one of the three great mathematicians -
Many years ago I chose him as my character in a balloon debate because
a) He invented integration
b) Invented the
Archimedian
Screw (the original hedonistic Greek!!!)
c) It is possible that he may have set Roman vessel on fire by we guess aligning the shields of
greek
soldiers in a
parobiolic
curve on the key of Syracuse
d) Of course the
Vol
Density discovery
But he was thwarted in what would have been his greatest achievement:
e) He was doing a calculation in the sand and I am the only person who
discoved
what it was
He had written
E=ma(squared)
and crossed it out
then he wrote
E-
mb
(squared)
and had crossed that out
Then just as he was in the middle of his third attempt
to get the right solution
and he had got as
fas
as
E=
He was killed by a Roman Soldier
Needless to say the others were tossed out of the balloon
Archimedes allowed me to float on air as well as water
harry
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Posted by
offasmate
(U14173562)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Archimedes jumped out of his bath shouting "eureka"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------,
Eureka ="I have found it"!
For such an important find, It is a great shame that his wife did not appreciate the man's genius when she yelled up from the kitchen, " Well you can stuff it where the sun don't shine Archie"
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
To
Dermod
1
Re You wrote:- "
Kepler
did not make the crucial "scientific leap" that Hooke made to understand why the orbits were as they were." - No indeed he didn't. Does that diminish his achievement?"
No it does not diminish his immense achievement in any way - It was just not MY choice of a Moment of Genius - as I have carefully explained. I really do think that Hooke's moment was
signifcantly
more important to the "Birth of the Enlightenment "- and this is why I chose it - what more can I say - it is after all a
blatently
subjective exercise???? and You have chosen yours.
2
Re "If I was (were) thinking in your way I would be saying Hooke was only a minor figure "because he failed to
recognise
the great truths behind general relativity".
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is surely not even close to a rational statement:
Einstein had all the knowledge accumulated since Hooke Newton
etc
.... onwards on which to build - I suspect Einstein would agree that he could not possibly have developed his theory in the 17th Century - Einstein was a Giant standing on the shoulders of a veritable pyramid of Giants.
3
Re the latest diatribe about the RS - I have already suggested that you send me an email with a well constructed set of
crticism
of the RS and I have offered to submit it to the key people at the Royal Society. I am all for seeking ways of improving the way in which the RS operates. What more can you ask for???
harry
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
You wrote:-
"I have offered to submit it to the key people at the Royal Society."
I will!
Regards.
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
I am sure that the RS will treat you more seriously than you are treated on these boards.
So good luck.
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Thursday, 16th December 2010
Oh
I forgot - how could I
Archimedes Amazingly
In "the Sand Reckoner" appears to have also invented
indeces
for handling very big numbers
eg
ca
10 to the 80
... without zero
harry
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Friday, 17th December 2010
Thank you HK.
Next time you have a spare moment to re-launch your balloon powered time machine, could you find an ancient Roman Officer responsible for 140,000 men, in a tent in central Europe somewhere, deciding how many horses, boots, clothes, ironmongeries, chickens, leather straps, donkeys, sacks of wheat, assault engines, leveling tools, broad swords, bronze daggers, prostitutes, shields, etc.
etc
, needed for the next 100 days and 1000 miles, AND hover over his shoulder and see
exacly
how he is calculating all the stock taking and re-provisioning details with only, I, V, X, C, L, M,
etc
, and according to our mythology, no proper rules of arithmetic, to enable long division, multiplication and so on.
They must have had a system!
Ps, you seem to be in inventing a counting system of your own, 0, 00,1,2,3,4,
etc
? ( see your earlier post).
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Friday, 17th December 2010
Habb
, you are either very stubborn or you do not read previous posts before setting out, again, your own point.
Of course the Romans had a system:
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
but not only did it not lead onto greater facility for future mathematicians/scientists it was so awkward that it was
abandonned
in
favour
of the Hindu/Arabic positional notation and zero which did lead on to pretty well everything since.
Hooke's use of the general equation was inherently significant and useful, apart from its application to SHM.
Nobody today uses Newton's conclusions in the form in which he presented them
ie
in prose.
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Friday, 17th December 2010
Not stubborn, just stupid, somehow I had never really thought of the abacus as being a common Roman tool.
In short they didn't calculate anything difficult with their numbers, they just used the abacus, which is column based positional system, but never twigged they could have adapted that to the written form.
Easy really, always something soft about and few pebbles, if no formal abacus available.
They did seem to have latched onto 12 as a wonderful number for expressing, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6. Maybe we, (I), have misjudged their facility in everyday life, and thought them constrained when they were not.
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Posted by
Robert Carnegie
(U982882)
on Saturday, 18th December 2010
The RS has what may be an online science chat forum, which would make up for a lot, but I say "may be" because it's for Fellows only! Or possibly only one because it's called the "
eFellow's
Room", but that is not a matter for -this- board, but for [Word of Mouth].
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Saturday, 18th December 2010
Here you are,
habbs
, just the thing for you:
www.dozenalsociety.o...
I do agree, just a pity humans have 10 fingers. Thank goodness we don't use the Babylonian system!
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Saturday, 18th December 2010
PS I wonder whether the annual sub is £10?
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Saturday, 18th December 2010
To all involved in this fascinating and for me very useful and "enlightening" discussion - including
Dermod
for starting it off - even though in a somewhat abrasive fashion!
My choice of Hooke - for what it is worth - should be seen in the following context: As I pointed out previously I was contacted by the BBC producer (Anne Buckley) while I was in the middle of trying to understand why the Enlightenment (which I equate with "Modern" Science) only took off about the time of Galileo - who is considered the Father of the Sciences. Why did it peter out as the Romans and Christianity destroyed the philosophical seeds planted by the Greeks. Why did the advances of the Indians who developed the numerals we use today and our numeracy as well as zero or the algebra breakthrough of the Arabs not re-ignite it? Indeed why did the Chinese not get there a thousand years ago? By the “Enlightenment” I mean Kant's definition – more-or-less! As far as I can tell it was about the time of Copernicus and Galileo that the conflict between rational evidence-based philosophy (science) and dogma (politics and especially religion
etc
) started. A conflict that is raging seemingly as violently today as in Galileo’s time. NB It was only about 1992 that the Vatican formally admitted that Galileo might actually be correct!!! I came to the conclusion that philosophy could not make a true paradigm shift until mathematics and specifically some sort of formal equations involving physically identifiable symbols became a sort of “lingua franca” of the Sciences. Note that for me the most important aspect of Science is that it is the only philosophical construct that we have invented on which we can rely to determine “Truth”. I have concluded that the critical moment occurred when scientists started to create hypotheses about physical observations/measurements and couched them accurately in symbolic form involving, say, mathematical or chemical equations (
etc
) which led to predictions which could subsequently falsify or validate a hypothesis – creating a “Law” in the latter case. So at the time of BBC contact I was actively searching for something of quite deep significance – at least to my mind and my choice of Hooke should be seen in the light of my ruminations over this problem.
It seemed to me that one of the best examples was actually the conjecture of Hooke who wrote to Newton to ask him whether he thought that his (Hooke’s) hypothesis that all bodies were attracted to each other according to an inverse square law could explain the motions of the planets
ie
the results of
Kepler
. As we know Newton, who was a much better mathematician than Hooke, was able to confirm Hooke’s hypothesis in spectacular fashion and it became a “Law”. Newton explained the orbits of the planets and in particular the orbit of Halley’s comet - and initiated the claim by Hooke that he had plagiarized Hooke’s work! However it seems to me that the theory “That all bodies are attracted to each other according to an inverse square law” had major generality as the parameters G, M and R relate to every kind of gravitational problem. This makes it a fundamentally different sort of “equation” from that of
Kepler
. Hooke’s Law also has similar properties in that universal parameters Force, Mass and Distance are involved making it applicable to all manner of – on the face of it - very different problems. Indeed I thus chose it partly because it was very simple and easily described in terms of an everyday object with which almost everybody was very familiar and most importantly would be able to understand quantitatively (the linear relation between mass and extension) –
ie
the spring pan balance. I also chose it because - in my mind - it is even more general than the gravitational problem in that it is the fundamental relationship that applies to the SHO dynamics of ANY system disturbed from equilibrium. It thus gives us an inside track to an understanding of the way much of the Universe works, so advancing general understanding on a multitude of levels: For example Hooke’s law allows us to understand not only the spring balance of Hooke’s
Tyme
but also the vibrations of CO2 responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time.
The other interesting main contender is the density equals (mass/volume) breakthrough of Archimedes. A reason – I admit as an afterthought! - for not choosing this breakthrough is that, though it is a general relationship in the sense that it is applicable to any body with mass and volume, it does not seem to me to lead to a deep understanding of any physical principle – and indeed it did not lead to the Enlightenment or Modern Science, from empirical observation. The issue I have with
Kepler
is that though his incredible feat of determining the elliptic orbits could predict say where Mars would be in a year’s time it was an empirical/geometrical relationship without physical parameters of the kind that could make the equation useful in making a-priori predictions of the motions of any other bodies. That needed the Hooke/Newton advance. In that sense I would see Euler’s equation as certainly an equation but of quite a different in kind. What do I mean? I am sure that the 3-4-5 triangle had been discovered long before Pythagoras’s time as I suspect builders had probably knotted a circle of string for millennia to get the right angles and it is very useful to this day in construction. It may even have been this that led Pythagoras to guess his general equation. This is also certainly an equation but a purely mathematical one involving no physically significant parameters.
Harry
Kroto
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Saturday, 18th December 2010
Sorry
Freudian slip of course I meant
Kepler's
equation not Euler's
harry
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
Re #38 Harry you wrote:-
"A conflict that is raging seemingly as violently today as in Galileo’s time. NB It was only about 1992 that the Vatican formally admitted that Galileo might actually be correct!!"
Oeff
! The "conflict of the time was as much within the Church as without it". The Catholic Church has as much trouble with ranting personalities inside it as well as those outside. You can get some idea of what was going on at the time here -
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
Giving the affair religious significance is just as daft as trying to impose 'Western Democracy' on an alien culture like that in Afghanistan. "Oh dear, the big guns didn't work, lets send in the peace workers "; using your own definition of 'peace workers', of course!
For various reasons, much to do with technical
developements
in ease of travel and improvements in agriculture, the 17th century Catholic Church had enormous
poltical
power; changes in this area had been underway in the 100 years since the reformation began.
Attempting to assign blame to particular individuals and
organisations
is just about as sensible as putting the blame for climate change on CO2, all it does is reveal a true lack of understanding on the part of the assigner.
You wrote:-
"For example Hooke’s law allows us to understand not only the spring balance of Hooke’s
Tyme
but also the vibrations of CO2 responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time."
Widely believe indeed but unfortunately requires CO2 to produce a change in the entropy of the atmosphere; do you really believe it does?
You wrote:-
"he issue I have with
Kepler
is that though his incredible feat of determining the elliptic orbits could predict say where Mars would be in a year’s time it was an empirical/geometrical relationship without physical parameters of the kind that could make the equation useful in making a-priori predictions of the motions of any other bodies."
Excuse me but - bullocks! His 3rd law predicts all orbits. What it doesn't do is predict where a orbit will survive for an extended period and why the planets are (mainly) coplanar in a ring round the equator.
Even today this is not widely disseminated information; the simple explanation is that (plural) objects in non-circular orbits tend to collide and either fuse or shatter. Out of the fused objects come, for a planet, moons and for the particles from shattered objects or space dust) come the rings found round planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The best paper I have found on this matter is :
iopscience.iop.org/0...
At the time of formation of a solar system the motions of the original material were relatively random; gradually by collision planets emerge, simply because they dominated the region of their orbit, sweeping up the nearby material through inelastic collision.
By a large margin
nonplanetary
bodies comprise the greatest number of objects orbiting the Sun
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
The orbits of all these do not deviate much from a circle; only comets and the like have a dominating elliptical shape. Comets spend a long time very far away from the C of G of the solar system, consequently the chance of destruction is small but not negligible
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
Hmmm
Dermod
1 Re "
Oeff
! The "conflict of the time was as much within the Church as without it". The Catholic Church has as much trouble with ranting personalities inside it as well as those outside. " Would you not say something similar about the tenor of your own contributions to this debate?
2 Science is
fundmantally
the doubt-based philosophy that requires evidence to determine with any degree of reliability what is TRUE - Indeed without evidence anything goes. So anyone who agrees with this
emprically
validated theory (fact?) will
recognise
thte
FACT that science will always be in conflict with dogma - political or religious
etc
that claim
authorty
on the basis of belief without evidence. There are of course many who do not need evidence for their belief
ot
their personal truth
ot
laws - these are however not universally accepted as are
Kepler's
!
3 Re "... lets send in the peace workers "; using your own definition of 'peace workers', of course! " What
exaclty
do you mean by "your own definition of 'peace workers', of course! " ?
4
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
Dear
Dermod
Not Finished - somehow most curiously my last message went off before
completiom
4 Re "Attempting to assign blame to particular individuals and
organisations
is just about as sensible as putting the blame for climate change on CO2, all it does is reveal a true lack of understanding on the part of the assigner.
You wrote:-
"For example Hooke’s law allows us to understand not only the spring balance of Hooke’s
Tyme
but also the vibrations of CO2 responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time." Widely believe indeed but unfortunately requires CO2 to produce a change in the entropy of the atmosphere; do you really believe it does?"
You are so bound up with your own views on a multitude of
isses
you do not read - or perhaps understand - what you claim to be commenting on
I am a just a poor
spectroscopist
but I can prove to you that as I said :
"the vibrations of CO2"
are
"responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time."
whether the effect is strong enough to be responsible for Climate Change I do not know for sure - You see you rant on without true understanding of the English
langauage
and/or the Science
5 I know your a great fan of
Kepler
- a worthy
cuase
- and know much
much
more about his work than I do - but I do really do not see how
Kepler
could have predicted, a-priori, the orbit of Halley's comet without the inverse square law that Hooke proposed and if he did then
Kepler
should be credited with this momentous achievement and not Newton - I should be all for that as Newton seems to have been a particularly unpleasant individual.
harry
6 Re the IOP URL - I must admit that I am not going to pay 60 quid to the IOP for the article to see if your claim is correct - please send your evidence to me by email
harry.
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
Harry, you say
"You are so bound up with your own views on a multitude of
isses
you do not read - or perhaps understand - what you claim to be commenting on
I am a just a poor
spectroscopist
but I can prove to you that as I said :
"the vibrations of CO2"
are
"responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time.""
Interesting.
You seem to know quite a lot about me. I have studied thermodynamics.
Have you also studied thermodynamics? I cannot imagine how you could begin to understand the thermal characteristics of solar systems without a thorough understanding of thermodynamics.
The great
grandaddy
of
radiative
thermodynamics was Gustav Kirchhoff, his first real breakthrough in calculating
radiative
heat transfer was
realising
that equilibrium temperatures were independent of spectral characteristics, a conclusion re-confirmed by Planck, Einstein and all developments in quantum physics.
If you are a
spectroscopist
you may know of Robert Bunsen
en.wikipedia.org/
wik
...
he and Kirchhoff worked closely on spectroscopy.
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
"but I can prove to you that as I said :
"the vibrations of CO2"
are
"responsible for the Greenhouse Gas effect in our time.""
I would be delighted.
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Posted by
RCWhiting
(U11440738)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
dermod
I think we are all well aware of how intelligent and knowledgeable you are; you have told us so.
But do you
realise
just how the effectiveness of your communications is reduced by the use of "daft", "bullocks" etc. There is no place for such terms in serious discussions.
Perhaps your hero should be Newton?
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
Dear
Dernod
The greenhouse gas effect is very simple and thermodynamics is not required to explain it - it is very simple (I have by the way studied thermodynamics): Visible radiation from the sun is not absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere because CO2 does not have transitions in this region - Air is pretty transparent and I would expect that this empirical
observation.might
be something you will agree with - though I am not sure! The visible light (energy) is absorbed by the ground (I also assume you agree that the Earth is not very transparent to optical radiation - though some is reflected. The absorbed radiation warms up the earth (the temperature rise of a tarmac road on a hot day is an
emprical
example!!!) and re-radiates some of that energy in the infra red. Some of this IR is absorbed by CO2 in particular by the bending and asymmetric stretching modes of vibration. Every scientist who knows the first thing about spectroscopy will agree that the trivially simple process I have just described must occur on each and every day that the sun shines on the earth as long as CO2 (and water
vapour
and numerous other greenhouse gases such as methane) is in the atmosphere. This is simply the definition of the "Greenhouse Gas effect". Whether or not it has anything to do with Climate Change is totally irrelevant to this discussion.
harry
harry
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
For those interested in the real issue (page 6)
.............................................................................................................................
According to
Andiesse
in his book on Huygens
1652 - It took
Christiaan
twelve years to understand the new method, but even then he found it difficult to apply- In the field of mathematics,
Christiaan
was clearly a virtuoso, but not an innovator. The science that he did rejuvenate was physics . In 1652, he wrote the very first physics formula (a mathematical equation for a physical phenomenon). For this alone, he may be regarded as the founder of mathematical physics.
Show less
From Huygens
books.google.com/
books?id
=c_89z0jcJJ4C&pg=PA6
.......................................................................
From Wiki Mechanics 1659
Huygens formulated what is now known as the second law of motion of Isaac Newton in a quadratic form. Newton reformulated and generalized that law. In 1659 Huygens derived the now well-known formula for the centripetal force, exerted by an object describing a circular motion, for instance on the string to which it is attached, in modern notation:
F_{c}=\
frac
{m\ v^2}{r}
with m the mass of the object, v the velocity and r the radius. Furthermore, Huygens concluded that Descartes' laws for the elastic collision of two bodies must be wrong and formulated the correct laws.
[edit] Wave theory
.................................................................................
Wiki on Hooke 1660
In mechanics, and physics, Hooke's law of elasticity is an approximation that states that the extension of a spring is in direct proportion with the load applied to it. Many materials obey this law as long as the load does not exceed the material's elastic limit. Materials for which Hooke's law is a useful approximation are known as linear-elastic or "
Hookean
" materials. Hooke's law in simple terms says that strain is directly proportional to stress.
Mathematically, Hooke's law states that
\
mathbf
{F}=-k\
mathbf
{x},
where
x is the displacement of the end of the spring from its equilibrium position (in SI units: "m");
F is the restoring force exerted by the material (in SI units: "N" or kgms-2 or
kgm
/s2); and
k is a constant called the rate or spring constant (in SI units: "N·m-1" or "kgs-2" or kg/s2).
When this holds, the behavior is said to be linear. If shown on a graph, the line should show a direct variation. There is a negative sign on the right hand side of the equation because the restoring force always acts in the opposite direction of the displacement (for example, when a spring is stretched to the left, it pulls back to the right).
Hooke's law is named after the 17th century British physicist Robert Hooke. He first stated this law in 1660 as a Latin anagram,[1] whose solution he published in 1678 as
Ut
tensio
, sic
vis
, meaning, "As the extension, so the force".
harry
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
You write:-
"The absorbed radiation warms up the earth (the temperature rise of a tarmac road on a hot day is an
emprical
example!!!) and re-radiates some of that energy in the infra red. "
Earth reradiates all the absorbed radiation, some is radiated directly from the surface but a lot is radiated by gases such as H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere.
You write:-
"Some of this IR is absorbed by CO2 in particular by the bending and asymmetric stretching modes of vibration."
Much more by H20.
What you describe is
radiative
heat transfer from surface to atmosphere, a process that may be responsible for as much as 10% of all heat transfer from surface to the atmosphere.
You write:-
"This is simply the definition of the "Greenhouse Gas effect". "
I don't think so. I thought the GH [gas] effect was a warming of the surface by 33K from 255K at present levels of H2O, CO2 etc. and more with increased CO2
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Message 49
, in reply to
message 47
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Posted by
Harry
Kroto
(U14724235)
on Sunday, 19th December 2010
If there is anybody left who is actually interested in the history of Modern Science (Physics) rather than irrelevancies the following URLs on Huygens (which may need verification) may be of interest: :
........................................................................................................................................
assets.cambridge.org...
The process of differentiation that would make this  possible had already been set out in 1675. In fact,
Christiaan
had stumbled upon it when Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who discovered it, had come to him two years earlier to learn mathematics. It took
Christiaan
twelve years to understand the new method, but even then he found it difficult to apply.
In the field of mathematics,
Christiaan
was clearly a virtuoso, but not an innovator. The science that he did rejuvenate was physics. In 1652, he wrote the very first physics formula (a mathematical equation for a physical phenomenon). For this alone, he may be regarded as the founder of mathematical physics.
The first phenomena that we encounter in this border  area between physics and mathematics are those of equilibrium and motion. Phenomena such as heat and magnetism are more complex and were barely understood in the seventeenth century. It was only logical that
Christiaan
should turn his attention to the science of mechanics, which had been given new impetus by Galileo with his research into falling and thrown objects. In 1652, thanks to his own mathematical precision,
Christiaan
discovered the theory of collision, and in 1659, the formula for force. Yet he failed to see the causal connection between motion and force, which made his studies of motion less convincing. Nevertheless, his contribution has been exceptional. In order to understand it fully we have to see it in connection with his practical interest in the pendulum clock.
....................................................................................................................................
fabpedigree.com/
jame
...
Christiaan
Huygens (or
Hugens
,
Huyghens
) was second only to Newton as the greatest mechanist of his era. Although an excellent mathematician, he is much more famous for his physical theories and inventions. He developed laws of motion before Newton, including the inverse-square law of gravitation, centripetal force, and treatment of solid bodies rather than point approximations; he (and Wallis) were first to state the law of momentum conservation correctly. He advanced the wave ("
undulatory
") theory of light, a key concept being
Huygen's
Principle, that each point on a wave front acts as a new source of radiation. His optical discoveries include explanations for polarization and phenomena like haloes. (Because of Newton's high reputation and corpuscular theory of light, Huygens' superior wave theory was largely ignored until the 19th-century work of Young and Fresnel. Later, Einstein, partly anticipated by Hamilton, developed the modern notion of wave-particle duality.)
harry
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Message 50
, in reply to
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Posted by
Habbsing
(U14626554)
on Monday, 20th December 2010
HK.
I think it is more interesting to get away from the detail and look at the broad sweep of human thought in the last 5000 years or so. It has been in steps, and
expessed
through first one culture then another, there have been many false dawns, and many re-inventions, empires have arisen and vanished. We can all have our list of stars through the centuries, but it seems to be the case that for a given decade or so, in any epoch, it is simply that the 'time for an idea to manifest has come' Unrelated scientists or thinkers may be struggling with mathematics or geometry, or explanations in physics, at the same time, but in different places; it's as if the culture, or the body of knowledge in a particular subject is just at that point when a
crystalisation
can start to happen. From calculus, to atomic theory, from
Pythagorus
theorem to celestial orbits, to matter seen as energy, to views that an ethical action had a wider universal significance than just random personal choice, there is across the range of disciplines, a moving wave rolling forward through history, ahead in some
endeavours
, behind in others.
For a variety of reasons, especially in the ancient world, some of these great leaps have become attached to an Archimedes, or a Pythagoras, or a Hooke, or a Fleming, but there have always been schools of thought, and the link that history has made with a particular genius is tenuous, and mostly now
unproveable
.
Does it matter? My hero is bigger than your hero, ends as being a personal value
judgement
, it is more interesting to look at the concatenation of factors that allowed and stimulated the change, that is associated with one special mind and his work, or of a related group. Were the Romans scientists? But let's see what they were doing; they had glass and zinc and copper and bronze and concrete, surveying equipment, they had courage, and they had enough
maths
and geometry to build many wonders. They had lead pipes, and calculating machines, siege engines and bridge technology, and more importantly they could transmit information faster than a man could ride on a team of fresh horses. They invented
signalling
towers, linked by sight lines, sending messages by semaphore right across Europe. This was an amazing advance in information Technology. What they were doing was applied science and technology, their energy and creativity was astonishing, they had taken the quiet village theoretical natural philosophy of the Greeks and turned it into real action.
When a proposition in geometry is made, say about the relationship of the surface areas of
diffent
solids, or about the properties and laws that concern isosceles triangles, and so, on a flat defined plane, a rigorous method is used. The reasoning proceeds by short logical steps, in which each step is a plain and irrefutable demonstration of being true, which leads to the next. After ten to twenty steps, QED, the proposition is shown to be a general truth, that applies to all triangles in all places at all times; given the rules, perfect Euclidian plane, etc. This is a kind of
disciplied
thinking is almost the heart of the scientific method. It has observation, it has a hypothesis that is a premise, it has reasoning that passes the test of truth at every stage, and it has a conclusion that is both universally true and is also predictive. It did not lead to the periodic table at the time, but it created an energetic expanding society, that actually had enough tools and theory to keep growing into a young uncluttered world space.
There are conditions that drive invention, in peace it must be perceived need and
focussed
attention, what we might describe as grant aided funding of pure research, in war it is necessity.
Benvenuto
Cellini, was dragged away from designing bronze doors and golden salt cellars, and other toys for the Pope, by the City to improve the fixed
defences
of the walls and gateways and to construct machines that could cause death at a distance.
As we ourselves are currently realizing that we must be leaner and meaner as a society, and cutting university courses, trying to predict outcomes and merit in advance for different disciplines, this is the time to be trying to uncover whatever general principles there are that trigger that precipitation of the new, that
constitues
the paradigm shift, that transforms the world, that may only be really clear in retrospect. These conditions will have changed over time, and a bit like the Romans we have enough knowledge and technology to fix everything in sight now, even if nothing new was discovered for a decade; our current problem is not the lack of tools, but our conflicted mentality and confused political will.
We need personal and national therapy, more than any new idea. That with all the knowledge we have, that we could still be destroying the ambience and fauna and flora of our little, and ONLY, planet, boggles the mind, and one of our weaknesses is to get lost in
agueing
the detail, when we need to see the overview. Urgently.
……………………………………………
Why Does the BBC Bother With Science?
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Message 51
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Posted by
Dermod
(U14282701)
on Monday, 20th December 2010
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Message 52
, in reply to
message 17
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Posted by
William_Stevenson
(U14099826)
on Tuesday, 21st December 2010
" It is extremely unfair to harangue the BBC on this matter - This person should target their complaints towards me."
Is this the real Harry
Kroto
?