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What would have happened if............


Sriman Dutta

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If the apple didn't fall on Newton's head, could mankind ever get his priceless theory? What would have happened to the present world if Pythagoras never discovered the famous theorem? Could modern trigonometry develop without it? Or, is it more probable that some other person would have invented them? Could modern science be developed without Faradays' experiment or Maxwell's explanations about electromagnetism? It seems that if those legends hadn't been born, our world would have never come to this level.

What do you think about this? Any thoughts or ideas or imaginations? :)

 

 

 

 

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If the apple didn't fall on Newton's head, could mankind ever get his priceless theory? What would have happened to the present world if Pythagoras never discovered the famous theorem? Could modern trigonometry develop without it? Or, is it more probable that some other person would have invented them? Could modern science be developed without Faradays' experiment or Maxwell's explanations about electromagnetism? It seems that if those legends hadn't been born, our world would have never come to this level.

What do you think about this? Any thoughts or ideas or imaginations? :)

 

 

There're many giants among us, not all are recognised.

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If the apple didn't fall on Newton's head, could mankind ever get his priceless theory? What would have happened to the present world if Pythagoras never discovered the famous theorem? Could modern trigonometry develop without it? Or, is it more probable that some other person would have invented them? Could modern science be developed without Faradays' experiment or Maxwell's explanations about electromagnetism? It seems that if those legends hadn't been born, our world would have never come to this level.

What do you think about this? Any thoughts or ideas or imaginations? :)

 

The apple story is thought to be almost certainly apocryphal by most science historians.

 

As far as Mssrs. Pythagoras, Faraday and Maxwell, they were without a doubt sublime scientists.....Some of Mr P's more mystical notions not notwithstanding. But I think that had those three not fathomed their respective momentous theories when they did, then, well, one of their colleagues would have do so within a matter of several years at most. IOW, twas just a matter of time.

 

Not to say folks living during the times of those three men might not have been deprived, had they not made their momentous discoveries. They probably would have. But for those of us both in the middle to latter half of the 20th century, and later, our lives would be no different. The world today would be exactly the same insofar as it's knowledge and progress in the arenas of navigation and math and electrical engineering. We'd just have different names in our text and science books.

 

I think Pythagoras was of the three the one who was most ahead of his time. And he'd be my luck if I had to choose one who would have left the biggest and longest running void had he not existed. I think colleagues of Maxwell and Faraday were pretty much hot on their heels.

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The apple story is thought to be almost certainly apocryphal by most science historians.

The falling on the head part is modern. When I was at school the story was that Newton merely observed the fall of an apple (and even that is probably apocryphal).

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I'm pretty sure humans observed the phenomenon of gravity long before Newton. What Newton did is write a bunch of convenient equations for people to use in physics modeling.

 

Though, I am not too impressed by Newtonian diagrams of friction modeling - most of the diagrams in high school display a vector arrow to represent "Friction Force" in a somewhat fictitious manner...the diagrams do not actually list the quantity of friction force, only return an "Fmax" value that determines the uS or uK friction coefficient to be used. The amount of actual friction thrust force is "assumed" to be min(mass*velocity,uS or uK*weight)

Of course, friction as thrust force is a fictious idea, since friction is more similar to a damping field or gear mechanism. Using Newtonian physics is problematic for modeling wheel physics, since wheels behave as a gear/cog on rails mechanism, not as a thrust force.

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I'm pretty sure humans observed the phenomenon of gravity long before Newton. What Newton did is write a bunch of convenient equations for people to use in physics modeling.

 

Damn his hide, and to think we're still using them today :eek:.

 

Though, I am not too impressed by Newtonian diagrams of friction modeling - most of the diagrams in high school display a vector arrow to represent "Friction Force" in a somewhat fictitious manner...the diagrams do not actually list the quantity of friction force, only return an "Fmax" value that determines the uS or uK friction coefficient to be used. The amount of actual friction thrust force is "assumed" to be min(mass*velocity,uS or uK*weight)

Of course, friction as thrust force is a fictious idea, since friction is more similar to a damping field or gear mechanism. Using Newtonian physics is problematic for modeling wheel physics, since wheels behave as a gear/cog on rails mechanism, not as a thrust force.

 

 

But what if your fictitious frictional force, is factually fractional? :unsure:

Edited by dimreepr
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Damn his hide, and to think we're still using them today :eek:.

 

 

 

But what if your fictitious frictional force, is factually fractional? :unsure:

I'm no expert on Langrangians, but from what Wikipedia implies, Langrangian physics is more useful to simulations than Newtonian physics.

 

Now what I mean by friction force being fictitious, is that Yes, friction exists, but it is not a single-vector thrust force like the Newton diagrams imply. And yes, the Fmax uS and uK components are somewhat derived from reality so they have some moderate usefulness. But in terms of simulations, treating friction like a single-thrust vector can become kind of problematic.

 

Also, I don't know what you mean by factually fractional.

Edited by quickquestion
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