Spencer Heath Archive

Item 49

Penciled by Heath in a “Scratch Book” notebook.

Not later than 1943

 

Original => 48

      

 

 

     To accelerate one gram from zero velocity to a velocity of 1 cm per sec, it must be moved ¹/₂ cm in 1 sec because the average velocity can be only half the final velocity.

     The force required to do this is a dyne and the distance or motion is a half centimeter. Force multiplied by motion or distance is called energy. A force of one dyne acting through a distance of one centimeter is the unit of energy called an erg.

     Modern physics, as an intellectual development deals with the abstractions known as mass, motion and time. It has no other fundamental conceptions and it has no actual or concrete experience but in the full combination of these three. Mass and motion united are called energy, but energy cannot be experienced apart from duration or time. When time is included it is technically called “action.” Action and action alone can have the actuality of being experienced concretely as interaction between environment and mind.

     Only through their investigations of radiant energy and its waves did scientists become really aware of concrete experience, of the inseparableness of energy and time. In other energy flows they seem scarcely yet to have become conscious of this inseparability.

     However, it has been found by experimental methods that the radiant emanations from incandescent atoms have always the velocity of light and that the energy flow is interrupted and divided into “packets,” as it were, consisting each of a “long train of waves.” It was the great discovery of Prof. Max Planck that the energy (mass and motion) involved in one of these trains of waves when multiplied by the time dimension or period of one wave (or divided by the wave-frequency) the product is always the same quantity or quantum of action.

     It seems that for the emanation proceeding from any of the ninety-two atoms there is a different and definite fre­quency of wave vibration and a definite amount of energy in the “trains of waves” between the successive interruptions and these quantities are such that their product is always the same, whatever be the differences in wave-frequency or in the wave trains.

h = dyne x cm x sec  (Sec = 1/f )

Then h = dyne x cm x 1/f

 

     The length in centimeters of one wave is a certain frac­tion of the number of centimeters contained in 186,000 miles. And that will be 186,000 miles (in centimeters) divided by the frequency. That will give the length in centimeters of one wave. Multiply this length by the number of waves in the “long train of waves” and we have the length or motion included in the “energy packet.”

     Then, since we know how much energy is in the “packet,” we can divide this energy by the amount of motion involved and this gives the number of dynes as the mass, weight or force element (in milligrams, approximately) involved in the energy “packet” — the energy being taken in dyne-centi­meters otherwise called ergs.

     Dividing this mass element by the number of waves in the “packet” gives the mass element or whatever it may be in the wave that corresponds with the mass or weight in a particle.

     Thus, if we can ascertain the number of waves contained in the “long train” or “packet” (of Eddington) we can then know the full characteristics of the single wave in terms of the mass, the motion, and the time involved in and consti­tuting the wave. We will have then a full quantitative analysis of the single wave emanating from any atom. From this we can arrange “waves of ‘action’” that appertain to each     of the atoms as structures in a series or table based on their respective contents of mass, motion
and time.

 

     If, however, we arrange a series or table in which we employ not the single wave but the “packet” of waves that emanates from each of the several atoms as quanta or “atoms of action” then our table will disclose the progressive organizational differences between the respective atoms in terms of the “atoms of action” which emanate from them.

 

     If the series or table of action-atoms be set up as proposed, each member, being a quantum of action, will be identical with every other, so far as magnitude or quantity is concerned. The progressive differences disclosed by the series will therefore be differences not of quantity but of kind. They will be qualitative differences among the several “atoms of action” or action atoms that appertain to and emanate from the structure or mass atoms of the several chemical elements. These qualitative differences will be in terms of the respective proportions of mass, motion and duration organizationally involved within the constant quanta.

     From this it appears that quantitative differences among the constituent elements within the equal quanta or “atoms of action” account for there being qualitative dif­ferences between the various quanta emanating from the dif­ferent chemical atoms, notwithstanding that there is no over-all quantitative difference between any one quantum and any other. Therefore, qualitative differences between equal quantities of action are due to quantitative differences of composition within the respective equal quantities. Qualita­tive changes are quantitative changes in the composition, pattern or design within a quantity of action without any necessary change in the total quantity itself.

     From this it follows that unless there are basic limits to the minuteness of divisibility of the mass, motion and duration factors of which a quantum as least quantity or any other quantity of action is composed, there can be endless differences of composition between any two equal quantities of action and unlimited changes of composition within the same quantity of action, however large or small. This does not depend on all the components of action being indefinitely divisible but it is still true if only one of them be so divisible. If, for example, there should be no top limit to the possible frequency of vibration and thus no bottom limit of minuteness or brevity of the period or interval of time, there would still remain the possibility of indefinite qualitative variety of composition even though neither mass nor motion should have unlimited divisibility or, for that matter, any divisibility at all.

     Let us now reverse our direction of thought as to magnitudes and consider integrations instead of divisions. Then what has been said suggests that the atoms of structure may be specific organizations of mass, motion and time and that molecular and molar structures are integrations of these specific organizations into specific configurations. Under this hypothesis, the term or period of a molecular structure would be the interval of time elapsed between its integration and complete disintegration. If this cycle or process be thought of as continuing in a repetitional series then we have a succession of molecular structures correspond­ing with a succession of radiating waves, but having vastly longer periods and similarly lower frequencies than any waves commonly known, although the period of disintegration of cer­tain radioactive elements is known to be brief. From this point of view it may well be that a “non-radioactive” element has been so called only because the period of its formation and disintegration has been too long and its frequency of repetition too low to be easily observed. These long periods of integration and disintegration may be regarded as cycles of atomic growth and decay in which the successive integrations repeat with configuration unchanged — having, in common with higher frequency waves, a __________ of 100 per cent.

     It may be, then, that an atom is fundamentally an “atom of action” or quantum; that singly (_________) or successively it is manifested only as a least emanation from structure; that in plurality without succession it is manifested only as an integration into structure. Atoms of highest frequency as emanations

    

     From these considerations we are powerfully assured that the possibilities of qualitative composition, of the creation of new designs, of planning and transforming action in accordance with desires, are not bound by any quantitative limitations that may appertain to the field of action, actuality, occurrences or experience within which the compo­sitions, creations, and realizing of desires are performed.