Faraday, Maxwell, Larmor and a great number of others tried to explain electromagnetic action on these lines, but all attempts failed, and it began to seem impossible that any properties of ether could explain the observed pattern of events.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Many physicists tried to explain electromagnetic action using ether properties but all attempts failed.
- In plain terms
- Scientists failed to explain electricity using ether.
- What can you take from it?
- Repeated failures suggest a fundamental concept may be wrong.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When should we stop trying a method?
- What does failure teach us?
Another view
The text is short and lacks specific outcomes.
More from James Jeans
At this time, space was supposed to be filled with an ether, a substance which might well serve, among other functions, to transmit forces across space. So lon…
Permalink to quote #5 Then the theory of relativity came and explained the cause of the failure. Electric action requires time to travel from one point of space to another, the simp…
Permalink to quote #7 Gravitational force is simple, and a thing by itself, as also are electric and magnetic forces as long as the electric and magnetic poles stand at rest. But as…
Permalink to quote #4
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