"Another conspicuous failure of classical mechanics was with one aspect of the problem of radiation. ...Imagine a crowd of steel balls rolling about on a steel floor. ...There must... be a steady leakage of energy from... causes, such as air resistance and the friction of the floor, so the balls will eventually lose energy, and, after no great length of time, will be found standing at rest on the floor. The energy of their motion seems to have been lost... most of it has been transformed into heat. The classical mechanics predicts that this must happen; it shows that all energy of motion, except possibly a minute fraction of the whole, must be transformed into heat whenever such a transformation is physically possible. It is because of this that perpetual-motion machines are a practical impossibility."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
James Jeans Physics and Philosophy (1942).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mechanics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Mechanics
27 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Mechanics →
Related Quotes
"Within a certain kind of environment, an activity may be checked so that the only meaning which accrues is of its dir…"
"To the art of mechanics is owing all sorts of instruments to work with, all engines of war, ships, bridges, mills, cu…"
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
"[T]he mere fact that a quantitative majority of causations are of vitalistic type, does not in the least mean that sc…"
"The work before us is a proof that the doctrine of mechanics is of the utmost importance to mankind in general, and t…"
"The laws of motion of visible and tangible, or molar, matter had been worked out to a great degree of refinement and …"
"[J]eder Fortschritt in der Theorie der partiellen Differentialgleichungen auch einen Fortschritt in der Mechanik herb…"
"Experimental physics was particularly interested in the processes taking place inside the atom, and in this field the…"
"The need for a fundamentally different approach to the study of physical processes at the molecular level motivated t…"
"People get a lot of confusion, because they keep trying to think of quantum mechanics as classical mechanics."