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: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Dropping

Dropping Quotes (8 quotes)

[After the flash of the atomic bomb test explosion] Fermi got up and dropped small pieces of paper … a simple experiment to measure the energy liberated by the explosion … [W]hen the front of the shock wave arrived (some seconds after the flash) the pieces of paper were displaced a few centimeters in the direction of propagation of the shock wave. From the distance of the source and from the displacement of the air due to the shock wave, he could calculate the energy of the explosion. This Fermi had done in advance having prepared himself a table of numbers, so that he could tell immediately the energy liberated from this crude but simple measurement. … It is also typical that his answer closely approximated that of the elaborate official measurements. The latter, however, were available only after several days’ study of the records, whereas Fermi had his within seconds.
In Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970), 147-148.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Air (366)  |  Answer (389)  |  Approximation (32)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Available (80)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Crude (32)  |  Direction (185)  |  Displacement (9)  |  Distance (171)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Due (143)  |  Elaborate (31)  |  Energy (373)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Enrico Fermi (20)  |  Flash (49)  |  Himself (461)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Measure (241)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Number (710)  |  Paper (192)  |  Propagation (15)  |  Record (161)  |  Second (66)  |  Shock (38)  |  Shock Wave (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Small (489)  |  Study (701)  |  Table (105)  |  Tell (344)  |  Test (221)  |  Trinity (9)  |  Wave (112)

Chemical waste products are the droppings of science.
In 'On Science and Certainty', Discover Magazine (Oct 1980).
Science quotes on:  |  Chemical (303)  |  Product (166)  |  Waste (109)

In college I largely wasted my opportunities. My worst subjects were drawing and science. Almost my only memory of the chemistry class was of making some sulfuric acid into a foul-smelling concoction and dropping it into another student's pocket.
From My Own Story (1957), 55.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Biography (254)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Class (168)  |  College (71)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Foul (15)  |  Making (300)  |  Memory (144)  |  Student (317)  |  Subject (543)  |  Worst (57)

In my opinion progress in science is usually made by dropping assumptions.
As quoted from first-hand conversation by Paul Davies, in About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution (1995, 1996), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Assumption (96)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Progress (492)  |  Usually (176)

On coming down the stairs at dinner Tris [Trismegistus = Frankland] who walked before me seemed impressed by a mechanical impulse which impelled him along the corridor with a fervid velocity. On reaching the stair bottom I discovered the cause of the attraction. Miss Edmondson, like a pure planet, had checked his gravitating tendencies and lo! He stood radiant with smiles dropping joysparkes from his eyes as he clasped her hand. His countenance became a transparency through which the full proportions of his soul shone manifest; his blood tingled from his eyebrows to his finger ends, and wealthy with rich emotions his face became the avenue of what he felt.
Journals of John Tyndall, 18 Jan 1848. Royal Institution Archives.
Science quotes on:  |  Attraction (61)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Biography (254)  |  Blood (144)  |  Cause (561)  |  Coming (114)  |  Countenance (9)  |  Discover (571)  |  Down (455)  |  Emotion (106)  |  End (603)  |  Eye (440)  |  Face (214)  |  Fervid (2)  |  Sir Edward Frankland (2)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Miss (51)  |  Planet (402)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Pure (299)  |  Radiant (15)  |  Smile (34)  |  Soul (235)  |  Through (846)  |  Transparency (7)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Walk (138)

The atom bomb was no “great decision.” It was used in the war, and for your information, there were more people killed by fire bombs in Tokyo than dropping of the atomic bombs accounted for. It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness. The dropping of the bombs stopped the war, save millions of lives.
In reply to a question at a symposium, Columbia University, NYC (28 Apr 1959). In Truman Speaks (1960), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Arsenal (5)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Bomb (20)  |  Decision (98)  |  Fire (203)  |  Great (1610)  |  Information (173)  |  Kill (100)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Merely (315)  |  Million (124)  |  More (2558)  |  People (1031)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Righteousness (6)  |  Save (126)  |  Saving (20)  |  Stopped (3)  |  Tokyo (3)  |  War (233)  |  Weapon (98)  |  World War II (9)

The dropping of the Atomic Bomb is a very deep problem… Instead of commemorating Hiroshima we should celebrate… man’s triumph over the problem [of transmutation], and not its first misuse by politicians and military authorities.
Address to New Europe Group meeting on the third anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb. Quoted in New Europe Group, In Commemoration of Professor Frederick Soddy (1956), 6-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Authority (99)  |  Celebrate (21)  |  Celebration (7)  |  Commemoration (2)  |  Deep (241)  |  First (1302)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Military (45)  |  Misuse (12)  |  Politician (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Triumph (76)

What is it to see, in an Eagle glide
Which fills a human heart with so much pride?
Is it that it soars effortless above the Earth
That steals us from our own limits & dearth?
Trapped in our seas of befuddling sludge
We try and try but cannot budge.
And then to see a mortal; with such ease take wing
Up in a breeze that makes our failing spirits sing?
Do we, vicarious birds, search in it our childishness -
When we too were young & yearned in heart to fly?
Taking flights of fancy through adolescent nights
Listening little, heeding less, knowing not why?
From its highest perch in the forest of snow
Majestic - the Eagle soars alone.
Riding thermals, lording clouds
Till dropping silent from the sky as a stone
But we, so quick and ready to fold
Give up our wings at the whiff of age
Losing years, cursing time, wasting spirit
Living out entire lives in futile rage!
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adolescent (4)  |  Age (509)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bird (163)  |  Breeze (8)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Curse (20)  |  Dearth (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drop (77)  |  Eagle (20)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effortless (3)  |  Entire (50)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Fill (67)  |  Flight (101)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fold (9)  |  Forest (161)  |  Futile (13)  |  Give Up (10)  |  Glide (4)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heed (12)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Less (105)  |  Limit (294)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listening (26)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Lord (97)  |  Lose (165)  |  Majestic (17)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Night (133)  |  Perch (7)  |  Pride (84)  |  Quick (13)  |  Rage (10)  |  Ready (43)  |  Ride (23)  |  Sea (326)  |  Search (175)  |  See (1094)  |  Silent (31)  |  Sing (29)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sludge (3)  |  Snow (39)  |  Soar (23)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Steal (14)  |  Stone (168)  |  Thermal (15)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trap (7)  |  Try (296)  |  Vicarious (2)  |  Waste (109)  |  Whiff (2)  |  Why (491)  |  Wing (79)  |  Year (963)  |  Yearn (13)  |  Young (253)


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.