Abstract
PROF. GREENHILL is, himself, one of many proofs that the distinction between “Engineers” and “Professors and College Men” is a Cross Division. Every “Engineer” ought to be a “highly-trained College man.” If he were, he would know at once, from the very first sentence of the Principia (Quantitas materiœ est mensura ejusdem &c., &c.) that mass is the personal property of a body, one of the invariable things in nature:— and not an accidental property dependent, for its amount and even for its very existence, on the momentary surroundings. The letter M has hitherto been used by Newtonians in this sense. If anyone has since attached to it another and different sense, he is responsible for the consequent confusion. Would it not be well if Prof. Greenhill, and the School to which he has attached himself, would kindly leave to Newtonians their M, as defined for them by their Master; and (with severely logical consistency) turn it upside down (thus, W) when they wish to embody their own revolutionary definition? No Newtonian will refuse to recognize Wv2/2g as a correct expression for so much energy:—though he will probably think it both clumsy and complex, and will prefer to write as usual his Mv2/2.
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TAIT, P. “Engineers” versus “Professors and College Men”. Nature 39, 223 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/039223b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/039223b0
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