In Vol II, 17-1 Feynman says:
"We know of no other place in physics where such a simple and accurate
general principle requires for its real understanding an analysis in terms
of two different phenomena. . . ."
I would reply that the first law of thermo speaks (at least
macroscopically) a similar situation - that the internal energy of a
system can be equally affected either by doing work on it or by adding
heat (intentional metaphor).
Indeed, the fact that so many disparate mechanical, optical,
thermodynamic, electrodynamic, etc phenomena are all rigorously
constrained to follow the common conservation laws of energy and momentum
is just such a serendipitous and mysterious finding.
On the other hand, what kind of physics would we have if we had not found
these conserved quantities of a zero sum game?
Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2002 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: induced emf again
| Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
| > ...
| > How come that both emfs can be
| > calculated by the same formula? Only a coincidance?
|
| Feynman called it a coincidence. If Fluck's rule were
| true in general, it would be worth figuring out why.
| But since it is true in a few special cases and not true in
| other cases, I'm not highly motivated to figure out what
| the true cases have in common. Maybe nothing.
| ...