Quote

I can never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand.

Lord Kelvin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Kelvin
Age: 83 †
Born: 1824
Born: June 26
Died: 1907
Died: December 17
Astronomer
Mathematician
Physicist
Politician
Scientist
University Teacher
Belfast
Ireland
The Lord Kelvin
Lord Kelvin
William Thomson
William (Lord Kelvin) Thomson
Make
Acceptance
Never
Models
Understand
Science
Cannot
Thing
Mechanical
Long
Satisfy
Way
Model

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

Image
Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter throughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.
Lord Kelvin
Image
The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Nothing can be more fatal to progress than a too confident reliance on mathematical symbols for the student is only too apt to take the easier course, and consider the formula not the fact as the physical reality.
Lord Kelvin
Image
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.
Lord Kelvin
Image
To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
Lord Kelvin
Image
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
Lord Kelvin
Image
You know only insofar as you can measure.
Lord Kelvin
Image
I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but ' vector ' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.
Lord Kelvin
Image
The vortex theory [of the atom] is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about dreams.
Lord Kelvin
Image
[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
Lord Kelvin
Image
When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.
Lord Kelvin
Image
There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
Lord Kelvin
Image
To measure is to know.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.
Lord Kelvin
Image
I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.
Lord Kelvin