Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
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Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Mass is found to increase with velocity, but appreciable increases require velocities near that of light.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Another most interesting change in the ideas and philosophy of science brought about by quantum mechanics is this: it is not possible to predict exactly what will happen in any circumstance.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
The mechanical rules of “inertia” and “forces” are wrong—Newton’s laws are wrong—in the world of atoms. Instead, it was discovered that things on a small scale behave nothing like things on a large scale. That is what makes physics difficult—and very interesting. It is hard because the way things behave on a small scale is so ”unnatural“; we have
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Magnetic influences have to do with charges in relative motion, so magnetic forces and electric forces can really be attributed to one field, as two different aspects of exactly the same thing.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
I thought to address them to the most intelligent in the class and to make sure, if possible, that even the most intelligent student was unable to completely encompass everything that was in the lectures—by
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Elastic energy is the formula for a spring when it is stretched. How much energy is it? If we let go, the elastic energy, as the spring passes through the equilibrium point, is converted to kinetic energy and it goes back and forth between compressing or stretching the spring and kinetic energy of motion.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little... See more
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
As we decrease the temperature, the vibration decreases and decreases until, at absolute zero, there is a minimum amount of vibration that the atoms can have, but not zero. This minimum amount of motion that atoms can have is not enough to melt a substance, with one exception: helium. Helium merely decreases the atomic motions as much as it can,
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