Dimensionless Constant Quotes & Sayings

She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm. — Tom Waits

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century.

Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.

We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. — Gerald Holton

I did enjoy football, but the injury factor for me, you know, I had so many issues. I don't know how long my career would've been. — Barry Larkin

Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature. Why do these constants come together to make the particular number 1/137.036 and not some other number? — John Archibald Wheeler

Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper. The rivets join us together and yet for all the passion we share nothing but our sense of division. — William Golding

The fine structure constant is undoubtedly the most fundamental pure (dimensionless) number in all of physics. It relates the basic constants of electromagnetism (the charge of the electron), relativity (the speed of light), and quantum mechanics (Planck's constant). — David J. Griffiths

Going to Chicago was like going out of the world ... — Muddy Waters

But some numbers, called dimensionless numbers, have the same numerical value no matter what units of measurement are chosen. Probably the most famous of these is the "fine-structure constant," ... Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature. — John Archibald Wheeler