Lazare Carnot Quotes

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Acceleration is finite, I think according to some laws of physics.

If you move something 10 pounds through space and then stop suddenly, there's a little overshoot. When you transfer weight from one leg to another, there's a certain way that it happens.

Playgrounds are essentially machines to induce Newtonian physics on our own bodies.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion, but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.

What goes up must come down.

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

For relaxation, I like to figure skate. Being on the ice and spinning and jumping, I feel very close to nature. In particular, I feel very close to Newton's laws of motion. On the ice, you can experience Newton's laws of motion in their purest, most elegant form.

An object in motion tends to remain in motion along a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

Friction is necessary for motion, labor necessary for birth.

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.

My physics teacher, Thomas Miner was particularly gifted. To this day, I remember how he introduced the subject of physics. He told us we were going to learn how to deal with very simple questions such as how a body falls due to the acceleration of gravity.

The same law takes place in a system, consisting of many bodies, as in one single body, with regard to their persevering in their state of motion or of rest. For the progressive motion, whether of one single body or of a whole system of bodies, is always to be estimated from the motion of the center of gravity.

In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.

The height of the pulleys from the ground was twelve yards, and consequently, when the weights had descended through that distance, they had to be wound up again in order to renew the motion of the paddle.

Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia; all force tends to persist.

Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain and the fitness of his hands for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, through which he may take from nature, by artifice, those forces in which he is naturally wanting

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist.

It is indeed a law of politics as well as of physics, that a body in action must overcome a body at rest.

Our annual school physics trip was always to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as it's such a good example of Newtonian physics. You can learn about centrifugal force and Newton's first law from the roller coasters, and the Viking long boat is a giant pendulum. It's good for children to understand that science underpins all these brilliant things.

A point of rest alone explains motion.

When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of its momentum. When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing.

Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.

A ball will always come to rest halfway down a hill, unless there is sand or water at the bottom.