Course in Elementary Physics

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Press of A. A. Kingman, 1873 - Mechanics - 176 pages
 

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Page 8 - What is called explaining one law of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for another ; and does nothing to render the general course of nature other than mysterious : we can no more assign a why for the more extensive laws than fof the partial ones.
Page 156 - The squares of the periods of revolution of any two planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.
Page 156 - that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle, with a force whose direction is that of the line joining the two, and whose magnitude is directly as the product of their masses, and inversely as the square of their distances from each other.
Page 52 - IV. // any number of forces acting at a point can be represented in magnitude and direction by the sides of a polygon taken in order, they will be in equilibrium.
Page 52 - If three forces, acting at a point, be represented in magnitude and direction by the sides of a triangle taken in order, they will be in equilibrium...
Page 8 - ... what are the fewest assumptions, which being granted, the order of nature as it exists would be the result? What are the fewest general propositions from which all the uniformities existing in nature could be deduced?
Page 8 - ... some more general phenomenon of which it is a partial exemplification, or some laws of causation which produce it by their joint or successive action, and from which, therefore, its conditions may be determined deductively.
Page 48 - The Parallelogram of Forces. — If two forces acting at a point be represented in magnitude and direction by the adjacent sides of a parallelogram, the resultant...
Page 3 - It is the custom in science, wherever regularity of any kind can be traced, to call the general proposition which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when, in mathematics, we speak of the law of decrease of the successive terms of a converging series. But the expression, law of nature...
Page 60 - The moment of a force about any point is the product of the magnitude of the force and the perpendicular distance from the point to the line of action of the force.

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