TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index A > Category: Aperture

Aperture Quotes (5 quotes)

If a man has a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and be it twelve bracchia across (over twenty-five feet) and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining injury. [His concept of the parachute.]
In Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 3-4, which notes twelve bracchia is over 25 feet. There are other translations with different units. Da Vinci’s illustration in his notebook showed a pyramid-shaped parachute below which hung a man suspended by a few short cords.
Science quotes on:  |  Aeronautics (15)  |  Concept (242)  |  Depth (97)  |  Down (455)  |  Himself (461)  |  Injury (36)  |  Linen (8)  |  Man (2252)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Tent (13)  |  Will (2350)

In 1945 J.A. Ratcliffe … suggested that I [join his group at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge] to start an investigation of the radio emission from the Sun, which had recently been discovered accidentally with radar equipment. … [B]oth Ratcliffe and Sir Lawrence Bragg, then Cavendish Professor, gave enormous support and encouragement to me. Bragg’s own work on X-ray crystallography involved techniques very similar to those we were developing for “aperture synthesis,” and he always showed a delighted interest in the way our work progressed.
From Autobiography in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel en 1974/Nobel Lectures (1975)
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Sir Lawrence Bragg (16)  |  Cambridge (17)  |  Crystallography (9)  |  Delight (111)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Emission (20)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Involved (90)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Professor (133)  |  Progress (492)  |  Radar (9)  |  Radio (60)  |  Radio Telescope (5)  |  Ratcliffe_Jack (2)  |  Ray (115)  |  Show (353)  |  Start (237)  |  Sun (407)  |  Support (151)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Technique (84)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)  |  X-ray (43)  |  X-ray Crystallography (12)

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Quoted in Donald R. Prothero and Carl Dennis Buell, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (2007), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Correction (42)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Process (439)  |  Right (473)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Correcting (5)  |  Survive (87)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wrong (246)

Think of the image of the world in a convex mirror. ... A well-made convex mirror of moderate aperture represents the objects in front of it as apparently solid and in fixed positions behind its surface. But the images of the distant horizon and of the sun in the sky lie behind the mirror at a limited distance, equal to its focal length. Between these and the surface of the mirror are found the images of all the other objects before it, but the images are diminished and flattened in proportion to the distance of their objects from the mirror. ... Yet every straight line or plane in the outer world is represented by a straight line or plane in the image. The image of a man measuring with a rule a straight line from the mirror, would contract more and more the farther he went, but with his shrunken rule the man in the image would count out exactly the same results as in the outer world, all lines of sight in the mirror would be represented by straight lines of sight in the mirror. In short, I do not see how men in the mirror are to discover that their bodies are not rigid solids and their experiences good examples of the correctness of Euclidean axioms. But if they could look out upon our world as we look into theirs without overstepping the boundary, they must declare it to be a picture in a spherical mirror, and would speak of us just as we speak of them; and if two inhabitants of the different worlds could communicate with one another, neither, as far as I can see, would be able to convince the other that he had the true, the other the distorted, relation. Indeed I cannot see that such a question would have any meaning at all, so long as mechanical considerations are not mixed up with it.
In 'On the Origin and Significance of Geometrical Axioms,' Popular Scientific Lectures< Second Series (1881), 57-59. In Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica (1914), 357-358.
Science quotes on:  |  Axiom (65)  |  Behind (139)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Convex (6)  |  Convince (43)  |  Count (107)  |  Declare (48)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Distance (171)  |  Distort (22)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Experience (494)  |  Farther (51)  |  Focal Length (2)  |  Good (906)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Image (97)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Line (100)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mirror (43)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Object (438)  |  Other (2233)  |  Picture (148)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Question (649)  |  Represent (157)  |  Result (700)  |  Rigid (24)  |  Rule (307)  |  See (1094)  |  Short (200)  |  Sight (135)  |  Sky (174)  |  Solid (119)  |  Speak (240)  |  Straight (75)  |  Straight Line (34)  |  Sun (407)  |  Surface (223)  |  Think (1122)  |  Two (936)  |  World (1850)

What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on September 12, 1758, while observing the comet of that year. ... This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I endeavored to find others, so that astronomers would not confuse these same nebulae with comets just beginning to shine. I observed further with suitable refractors for the discovery of comets, and this is the purpose I had in mind in compiling the catalog.
After me, the celebrated Herschel published a catalog of 2000 which he has observed. This unveiling the sky, made with instruments of great aperture, does not help in the perusal of the sky for faint comets. Thus my object is different from his, and I need only nebulae visible in a telescope of two feet [focal length].
Connaissance des Temps for 1800/1801. In Charles Coulston Gillespie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1974), Vol. 9, 330.
Science quotes on:  |  2000 (15)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Brightness (12)  |  Catalog (5)  |  Comet (65)  |  Compilation (3)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Find (1014)  |  Focal Length (2)  |  Form (976)  |  Great (1610)  |  Sir William Herschel (14)  |  Horn (18)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Object (438)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perusal (2)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Sky (174)  |  Taurus (2)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Two (936)  |  Undertake (35)  |  Undertaking (17)  |  Unveiling (2)  |  Visibility (6)  |  Visible (87)  |  Year (963)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.