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Michael Faraday (22 Sep 1791 - 25 Aug 1867) English physicist and chemist who was a great experimentalist. His major contributions included the early understanding of electromagnetism. Short biography of Michael Faraday >>

Michael Faraday
“I am jealous of the term atom”

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“But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature…”

— Michael Faraday

In Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity (1833)

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In one of Faraday’s many papers on his electrical experiments at the Royal Institution, in one dated 31 Dec 1833, he reports on measurements made during the the electrolysis of water, and considered “how the water is decomposed.” For this he considers his results in terms of “the atomic theory or phraseology,” after which, he comments:

But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration.

Aside—While reading the paper, Webmaster noted that Faraday recorded collecting 12.5 cubic inches of gas at a temperature of 52º and a pressure of 29.2 inches. He then corrected for temperature, pressure and moisture to calculate that the gas volume would be 12.15453 cubic inches of dry hydrogen at mean temperature and pressure. Together with the volume of oxygen evolved, he calculated the weight of water decomposed to be 2.3535544 grains. From an initial measurement with three significant figures (or two for the temperature), he calculated a result to eight significant figures! Yikes! And all this before the seductive LED displays of arithmetic number-crunching on today's electronic calculators! (As any high school student now knows—or darn well ought to know—lab results calculated by multiplication have no physical meaning beyond the smallest number of significant figures in the original data measurements.)

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Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

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