Home > Work > For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics QUOTES

For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics QUOTES

1 " What counts, I found, is not what you cover, but what you uncover. Covering subjects in a class can be a boring exercise, and students feel it. Uncovering the laws of physics and making them see through the equations, on the other hand, demonstrates the process of discovery, with all its newness and excitement, and students love being part of it. "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

2 " why on earth should you generate current in that coil? It wasn’t clear at first what the importance of this discovery was. Soon afterward, the story goes, a dubious politician asked Faraday if his discovery had any practical value, and Faraday is supposed to have responded, "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

3 " My purpose in the classroom, and the main reason I’ve written this book, is to translate the truly astounding, groundbreaking, sometimes even revolutionary discoveries of my fellow physicists into concepts and language intelligent, curious laypeople can really get hold of—to make a bridge between the world of professional scientists and your world. Too many of us seem to prefer talking only to our peers and make it awfully difficult for most people—even those who really want to understand science—to enter our world. "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

4 " of glass and put a magnet underneath, get ready for some remarkable results—a lot more interesting "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

5 " We don’t need to understand why a rainbow or fogbow or glassbow is formed in order to appreciate its beauty, of course, but understanding the physics of rainbows does give us a new set of eyes (I call this the beauty of knowledge). "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

6 " play “Jingle Bells” on a wooden slide trombone in my class, and the students love it—I never tell them it’s the only tune I can play. In fact, I’m so challenged as a musician that no matter how many times I’ve given the lecture, I still have to practice beforehand. I’ve even made marks on the slide—notes, really—numbered 1, 2, 3, and so forth; I can’t even read musical notes. But as I said before, my complete lack of musical talent hasn’t stopped me from appreciating music’s beauty, or from having lots of fun experimenting with it. "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

7 " Our poor ears can hear a pretty wide range of frequencies—more than three orders of magnitude, in fact—but we aren’t outfitted to hear the music of the heavenly spheres. "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

8 " One way to think of architecture and construction engineering, then, is that they are the arts of battling the downward force to a standstill. We may think of certain feathery skyscrapers as having escaped gravity. They’ve done no such thing—they’ve taken the battle literally to new heights. If you think about it for a little while, you’ll see that the stalemate is only temporary. Building materials corrode, weaken, and decay, while the forces of our natural world are relentless. It’s only a matter of time. "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

9 " The characteristic sounds of a trumpet, oboe, banjo, piano, or violin are due to the distinct cocktail of harmonic frequencies that each instrument produces. I love the image of an invisible cosmic bartender, expert in creating hundreds of different harmonic cocktails, who can serve up a banjo to this customer, a kettledrum to the next, and an erhu or a trombone to the one after that "

― Walter Lewin , For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics