Albert Einstein? Ernest Rutherford? Cyril Hinshelwood? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: It should be possible to explain a valid scientific theory to anybody, e.g., a nine-year-old, a grandmother, or the man in the street. This dubious assertion is challenged by the fact that few humans are able to comprehend the notion of a four-dimensional space-time manifold …
Category Archives: Ernest Rutherford
If Your Experiment Needs Statistics, You Ought To Have Done a Better Experiment
Ernest Rutherford? John M. Hammersley? Judy Campisi? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The raw data collected in some scientific experiments is extensively processed via statistical operations. The tentative conclusions of this research may be accompanied with complex discussions of confidence levels. The prominent physicist Ernest Rutherford preferred decisive experiments that did not require sophisticated statistical analysis. …
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Anyone Who Expects a Source of Power from the Transformation of These Atoms Is Talking Moonshine
Ernest Rutherford? Robert Millikan? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The experimental physicist Ernest Rutherford won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on radiation. Later his research group at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge split the nucleus of an atom in a controlled manner. Yet, he doubted that atomic physics would produce a …
Quote Origin: All Science Is Either Physics or Stamp Collecting
Ernest Rutherford? John Desmond Bernal? Richard Feynman? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Recently, while reading about the discovery of a new species of frog I marveled at the remarkable diversity of the biosphere. But, I was also reminded of the following humorous and barbed assertion: All science is either physics or stamp collecting. This statement …
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