James Jeans - Energy Quotes

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First we notice an investigation which Prof. Plank of Berlin published in 1899. His aim was that it should fit the observed facts of radiation, and show why the energy of bodies was not wholly transformed into radiation.... his investigation seemed to show that continuity had to be given up, suggesting that in the last resort changes in the universe do not consist of continuous motions in space and time, but in some way are discontinuous.

James Jeans
In every previous application of the quantum law, Plank's law, that the energy is h [Plank's constant] times the frequency, had been used to deduce the energy of a quantum when the frequency of the radiation was already known. In the present case the formula was used the other way; the energy of the emitted photon was known to begin with, and the formula was utilized to deduce its frequency. The frequencies calculated in this way are found to agree completely and exactly with those of the spectrum of hydrogen.

James Jeans
Heisenberg finds that facts of observation lead uniquely and inevitably to the theoretical structure known as matrix mechanics. This shows that the total radiation in any region of empty space can change only by a single complete quantum at a time. Thus not only in the photo-electric phenomenon, but in all other transfers of energy through space, energy is always transferred by complete quanta; fractions of a quantum can never occur. This brings atomicity into our picture of radiation just as definitely as the discovery of the electron and its standard charge brought atomicity into our picture of matter and of electricity.

James Jeans
Precisely similar ideas are applicable to the molecules that form the air in a room.... The classical mechanics now predicts that the whole energy of motion will be changed into radiation [heat], so that the molecules will shortly be found lying at rest on the floor... In actual fact they continue to move with undiminished energy, forming a perpetual-motion machine in defiance of classical mechanics.... We have passed from one to another of three worlds... from the man-sized world to the world of the electron.

James Jeans
We now know that there is, in principle, no permanence in substance; it is mere bottled energy, and possesses no more inherent permanence than bottled beer.

James Jeans
Space, regarded as a receptacle for radiant energy, is a bottomless pit.

James Jeans