Physics

There’s a notable family named Stein,
There’s Gertrude, there’s Ep, and there’s Ein.
            Gert’s prose is the bunk
            Ep’s sculpture is junk
And no one can understand Ein!
— anon in W. S. Baring-Gould, The Lure of the Limerick, 176

… to have recourse to physics to make men religious is like recommending a canonry as a cure for the gout, or giving a youngster a commission as a penance for irregularities.
— John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890), Religion and Science.

If the discharge of a fairly large induction coil be made to pass through a Hittorf vacuum tube, or through a Lenard tube, a Crookes tube, or other similar apparatus, which has been sufficiently exhausted … and if the whole apparatus be placed in a completely darkened room, there is observed at each discharge a bright illumination of a paper screen covered with barium platinocyanide, placed in the vicinity of the induction coil …
— Wilhelm Röntgen (1845 – 1923), describing how he discovered X-rays.

About two years ago, I printed this theory in an Anagram at the end of my book of the Descriptions of Helioscopes, viz, ceiiino sssttuv [which translates to the Latin] ut tensio sic vis [literally, as the tension, so the force]; That is, The Power of any Spring is in the same proportion with the Tension thereof….Now as the Theory is very short, so the way of trying it is very easie.

Take then a quantity of even-drawn wire, either Steel, Iron or Brass, and coyl it on an even Cylinder into a Helix of what length or number of turns you please, then turn the ends of the Wire into Loops, by one of which suspend this coyl upon a nail, and by the other sustain the weight that you would have to extend it, and hanging on several Weights observe exactly to what length each of the weights do extend it beyond the length that its own weight doth stretch it to, and shall find that if one ounce, or one pound, or one certain weight doth lengthen it one line [a measure of length] or one inch, or one certain length, then two ounces, two pounds or two weights will extend it two lines, two inches or two lengths; and three ounces, pounds or weights, three lines, inches or lengths; and so forward. And this is the Rule or Law of Nature, upon which all manner of Restituent of Springing motion doth proceed, whether it be of Rarefaction, or Extension, or Condensation and Compression …
— Robert Hooke, describing ‘Hooke’s Law’.

What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Henry IV Part 1, II, iv

So in a world where the nuclear force was a few per cent stronger, there would be virtually no hydrogen left over from the big bang. No stable stars like the sun could exist, nor could liquid water. Although we do not know why the nuclear force has the strength it does, if it did not, the universe would be totally different in form. It is doubtful if life could exist.
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 187-8.

If all the world were paper,
And all the sea were inke;
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we do for drinke?
— Anon.

Bigger whirls have little whirls,
That feed on their velocity;
The little whirls have lesser whirls,
And so on to viscosity.
— Lewis Fry Richardson (1881 – 1953), summarising his paper The Supply of Energy from and to Atmospheric Eddies (1920).

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