¶ Powering (1)
Index Entry
Re Equation 10 P² + 2:
"That is a very interesting kind of mathematics for you to think about for certain reasons. To start off, you have second power. This second power is a number characterizing layers or surfaces. What we use for surface is a shell-- in a sense it becomes the ‘surface’ or a package in the system. I get a bigger package and I can tell what the number is by using the second power. We have been very used to using second power for the surface of a cube or any other thing. We say the linear measure is first power; this is the radius or edge of the cube and the surface is the second power, and the volume is the third power. Second power has been connected uniquely with surface area and it is still the surface or the shell. But what it is showing is very interesting: there is no continuous shell, there are actually only points. They are little spheres. You can have this very high frequency and we would be counting the points in the shell, and not the surface as a whole, so we find second power representing points in the system and not surface. . . What we really discover in physics is that there are no such things as solids, and there are no such things as surfaces, because what we simply meant was a solid surface.
¶ Citations
- Oregon Lecture #7, p.239, 11 jul’62
