Spencer Heath Archive

Item 85

Penciled by Heath on deteriorating notepad paper. A page of pencil calculations requires photocopying.

No date

 

 

White envelope also contains originals of 1159 and 1458.

    

    

     The quantum hypothesis presupposes nothing but action or events. These it presupposes as constituting the objective side of experience and as being composed of three and only three unlike elements, each always united with and insepar­able from the other two in events yet capable of being separately measured and its dimension ascertained in terms of one of the units of the three fundamental elements of physical science. These three fundamental elements that unite to constitute action or events are: (l) Mass, taken in its property of force or of resistance — inertial mass, (2) Motion, taken in its property of here-to-there as dis­tance, length or space and, (3) Time, taken in its aspect as the discontinuity, rhythm or frequency, of motion.

 

/Photocopy page from original/

 

     If, instead of 1 mass or force unit and 1 velocity unit at the end of one second —

 

     We take 32 mass or force units and 32 velocity units,

 

     Then the result from applying formula S = M(v²/₂) will be, in mass and length units, just (32)² times as large as when we used one mass unit and one velocity unit.

 

     So, if we apply M(v²/₂) to a pounds-foot gravitation system having the number of gravity units the same as the number of acceleration units we must divide the result by (32)² to reduce it to pounds-foot units.

 

     Let us take a case of 40 pounds falling for 3 seconds:

M = 40,  V = 3 x 32  M(v²/₂) = 40 x (3 x 32)²/2 pounds-feet. This divided by (32)² leaves 40 x 3²/2 = 180 pounds-feet.

 

     Thus the formula E = M(v²/2) does apply to a falling body when we allow for the fact that both the mass units and the velocity units are 32 times as numerous as in the GCS system.

 

     In the GCS system there is, in the basic formula, but a single force or mass unit and but a single velocity unit — thus only one half an energy unit (dyne-centimeter) because the distance traversed is only ¹/₂ centimeter when the acceleration is raised from zero centimeters per second to one centimeter per second, all within one second.

 

     But in the gravitation system, under like conditions (and using the same time unit) there must be 32 mass units acting during and 32 velocity units acquired during one second. Hence the numerical result is (32)² times larger.

 

     The conventional units in which these three elements of action or events are measured and thus have their dimensions when united in any action or event are, (1) The gravitational mass unit called the gram (having the inertial mass of one dyne — approximately one-thousandth of a gram), (2) The motion, length or distance unit called the centimeter, and (3) That interval of repetition of any motion (based on the earth’s motion-cycles) that is called the second.

 

     Any integration of mass, motion and time is an action or event. Events are of many sizes and of many kinds. The magnitude of an event is the product of its several dimensions of mass, motion and time in terms of the three dimensional units described. But the kind or quality of an event is determined by the ratios in which its several elements or dimensions are combined. The differences in these internal ratios is the basic distinction between the quantitative aspect of events, in which aspect all events might be exactly the same except as to size, and those aspects of events in which they are qualitative, affective /?/ or functional when they are organized into specific complex structures.

 

     Under the quantum generalization all actions or events, except the most elemental, are, so to speak, granular or atomic in the sense that they are complexes of indivisible unitary events called quanta of action, the existence of which has been definitely accepted and experimentally proved.

 

     Now the most striking and identifying feature of these quanta of action is that they are all of precisely the same over-all magnitude. However different their internal ratios, their proportions of mass, motion and time, whatever their qualitative variance, they are still of precisely one and the same over-all magnitude; the product of their three component elements is always the same.

 

     This product, this magnitude of a quantum is exceedingly small. It is at the vanishing point of experience. Being indivisible, no fractions of it can be experienced. It may be changed (in its proportions) but it cannot be diminished, nor can it be increased except by additions of equal magnitude.

 

 

 

 

Quantum generalization releases the mind from the bondage of static or geometric conceptions.