Re: Non-conservative forces in a liquid dielectric

[Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskil@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

I was speaking for myself only. If it was my "wild guess"
I would probably react differently. But when somebody
else wants me to perform an experiment based by "it
seems to me" I am not sufficiently motivated. Time and
resources are limited and trying to be efficient is not a
bad think. As a teacher I would ask a student "why do
think so?" and try to reason first. But, as I said before, I
would accept experimental evidence, no matter how
much it  disagrees with logical thinking. I suppose that
some accepted findings about nature did start as wild
guesses. Can somebody give a good example?
Ludwik Kowalski


On Monday, Jun 2, 2003, at 10:49 US/Eastern, pvalev wrote:

> --- Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskil@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU> wrote:
> > On Monday, Jun 2, 2003, Pentcho Valev wrote:
> >
> > > ....  but it seems to me that, for the
> > > same height of the capacitor with
> > >  respect to the ground, this force
> > > is smaller in step 4 than in step 2. . . .
> >
> > I would not be tempted to perform an experiment
> > on the basis of the "it seems to me," considering
> > the extraordinary claim (continuous conversion of
> > heat to work at a constant temperature). But I would
> > be very interested if the wild guess was confirmed
> > in real experiments performed by several people.
>
> This "it seems to me" is the most unimportant thing in the whole
> story, Ludwik. I thought you were sincerely interested. There is
> no "wild guess". Just a suggestion that an experiment could confirm
> or disprove the second law. Science has always been based on such
> experiments and none of them deserve the name "wild guess".
>
> Pentcho