3 James Jeans Quotes on Classical mechanics

James Jeans quotes on classical mechanics

13. ...experimental physics was particularly interested in the processes taking place inside the atom, and in this field the classical mechanics was failing conspicuously and completely. Perhaps its most spectacular failure was with the fundamental problem with the structure of the atom.

15. 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.

32. Bohr had... discovered that the frequencies corresponding to very large integers could be calculated accurately from the classical mechanics; they were simply the number of times that an ordinary electron would complete the circuit of its orbit in one second when it was at a very great distance from the nucleus of the atom to which it belonged. This could only mean that when an electron receded to a great distance from the nucleus of its atom, it not only assumed the properties of an ordinary electron, but also behaved as directed by the classical mechanics. Yet the classical mechanics failed completely for the calculation of frequencies corresponding to small orbits.