Abstract
IN laying down the fundamental notions of mechanics there has been divergence of opinion concerning the definition of force. There is the distinction between cause and effect, between statics and dynamics. The older school has regarded force as the cause of motion, modern theorists prefer to define and measure force by the effect only. Herr Manno attempts to construct a system of mechanics by regarding force as neither cause nor effect, but as the phenomenon of motion itself, and further, in order to get rid of the notion of action at a distance, every instance of force is supposed to be due to impact, so that motion is transferred from body to body by a succession of intervening impacts. Accordingly the attempt is made to develop the theory of impulsive forces from the simple cases of direct and oblique impact. Naturally, in this view, some divergence is found from the ordinarily accepted theory. The proportionality of cause and effect as implied in the “second law of motion ”obviously fails when the momentum of a striking body is regarded as producing the momentum of a struck body.
Theorie der Bewegungsübertragung.
By Richard Manno. Pp. iv + 102. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1903.)
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H., R. Theorie der Bewegungsübertragung . Nature 68, 294 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068294a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068294a0