Word: newtonian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...search for why, and we become hopelessly bogged down in worldly metaphors, which are our second problem. We believe in Boyle's Law and various aspects of Newtonian Physics, and so we think that "outbreaks," "explosions," "eruptions," etc. occur when there is a lot of pressure built up. So when the newspapers and everyone else say that the campus "exploded," our mind moves to the physical metaphor. Next, it moves to the causes of explosion--what enormous pressures have built up and have no place to go and go explode? And so we look for the reasons: the channels...
...agrarian society with an elite electorate and disenfranchised majority. Now the U.S. is a highly industrial, urbanized and interdependent nation in which the electorate, though fully enfranchised, is paradoxically less able to influence Government bureaucracies. Moreover, say the fellows, the Constitution's original architects were devout Newtonians, who applied to human government the same kind of clocklike checks and balances that were then thought to govern the plan ets. Now scientists see the universe as a system of or ganic and symbiotic processes, and American Government may well be as outdated as Newtonian mechanics...
...20th Century Physics." His students, drawn from many disciplines, listened intently. "Science, unlike theology," Rabi argued, "questions its own bases all along. It is a developing thing and, of itself, is revolutionary. And, as such, it particularly fits our time." He noted how early 19th century scientists thought that Newtonian mechanics explained everything, how early 20th century scientists saw quantum mechanics as all-encompassing, how the ever unraveling discoveries of nuclear physics forever destroyed absolutes in science. "Science," he said, "is like one of those old English country houses which is never finished, is continually being added...
...Newtonian or Quantum? After exposing the cylinder to light of a uniform wave length for periods ranging from half an hour to ten hours, the scientists analyzed its contents to detect molecules of deuterium hydride. The process was repeated, each time with a light beam of longer wave length and lower energy, until they failed to find molecules of deuterium hydride in the cylinder-no matter how long the gases had been exposed to the light. At this particular wave length, it seemed clear, the deuterium atoms had not been given enough velocity to split the hydrogen molecules and combine...
...they improve their techniques, the Caltech researchers hope to determine with assurance whether chemical reactions can be described by the laws of Newtonian physics-or by quantum mechanics, in which atoms and subatomic particles behave both like bits of matter and like light waves. Once the answer is known, scientists should be able to calculate precise chemical reaction rates and the amount of energy needed to cause ,them, taking most of the guesswork out of laboratory and industrial chemistry...