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Articles: My Thoughts | In quest of Infinity-06
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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This does not mean that those theories are wrong or are too naïve. In fact, theories of elasticity, etc., whose foundations were laid during those days are still used by engineers. In other words, when we deal with Nature, we have to do so at several scales of length and time; this is a very important point.
Sir Isaac Newton
Journey into the Microcosm
Let us try to understand this last remark. In astronomy, we deal with very large scales of distances that are measured in light years. As for the time scale, a few hundred thousand years is no big deal, considering that stars live for millions of years. Come down to earth and in normal life, distances we encounter range from kilometres to millimetres and may be a bit less, like the thickness of a hair. As for time, it ranges from years to minutes to seconds and may be fractions of a second like a millisecond or one thousandth of a second. Looking through a microscope, we can begin to see bacteria and things like that which are much smaller [and therefore require a microscope].
In this way, let us suppose we go down to the level of molecules. Here I must pause and mention an important fact. Although ancient Greeks and Hindus as well as Arabs are credited with proposing the idea of atoms being the building blocks of matter, the idea gained scientific currency only in the 19th century, from chemists to start with. In fact, strangely enough, until late 19th century, many physicists did not believe in the atomic theory of matter. One physicist who suffered on account of this prejudice was Ludwig Boltzmann of Austria.
Boltzmann developed what is called the Kinetic Theory of Heat, the essential idea of which is that heat really boils down to the random motion of the atoms and molecules in the body concerned. The greater the velocities with these tiny objects fly, the greater is the temperature of the body. Boltzmann developed this theory in great detail, and the theory is extensively used to this day by heat engineers. Unfortunately, at the time it was proposed, a well-known physicist named Ostwald strongly opposed it, as a result of which Boltzmann was ignored by many.
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