Equations and Laws of Nature

    Poetry of science is in some sense embodied in its great equations. An equation is fundamentally an expression of perfect balance. For the mathematician – usually unconcerned with science – an equation is an abstract statement, having nothing to do with concrete realities of the real world. It is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which mathematical equations have nothing to do with the workings of nature. Yet the marvelous thing is that they do. Physicists routinely cast their laws in the form of equations featuring symbols that each represents a quantity experimenters can measure. It is through this symbolic representation that the mathematical equation has become one of the most powerful weapons in scientists’ armory.

  Best known of all scientific equations is E = mc², was first suggested by Einstein in 1905. Like all great equations, it asserts a surprising equality between things that superficially appear to be quite different – energy, mass and speed of light in a vacuum. Like all other equations E = mc² balances two quantities, in the same way as a pair of weighing scales, with the = sign serving as the pivot. But whereas the scales balance weights, most equations balance other quantities. E = mc2, for example, balances energies. This celebrated equation began its life as a confident Einstein’s speculation, and only decades later became part of the corpus of scientific knowledge, after experimenters had shown that it does indeed concur with nature. Now a twentieth century icon E = mc² is one of the few things about science that every TV quiz participants are expected to know.

  Great equations also share with the finest poetry an extraordinary power – poetry is the most concise and highly charged form of the language, just as the great equations of science are the most succinct form of understanding of the aspect of physical reality they describe E = mc² is itself enormously powerful; its few symbols encapsulate knowledge that can be applied to every energy conversion, from ones in every cell of every living thing on Earth, to the most distant cosmic explosion. Better yet, it seems to have held good since the beginning of time.

  In the same way as close study of a great equation gradually enables scientists to see things they initially missed, so repeated readings of a great poem stir new emotions and associations. The great equations are just as rich a stimulus as poetry to the prepared imagination. Shakespeare could no more have foreseen the multiple meanings readers have perceived in his poems than Einstein could have predicted the myriad consequences of his equations of relativity.

  None of this is to imply that poetry and scientific equations are the same. Every poem is written in a particular language and loses its magic in translation, whereas an equation an equation expressed in the universal language of mathematics is the same in English as it is in Urdu. Also, poets seek multiple meanings and interactions between the words whereas scientists intend their equations to convey a single logical meaning. The meaning great scientific equations usually furnish us with is called a law of nature.

WORD FORMATION: Academic English

Read the texts of the unit again and fill the table. Use a dictionary when necessary.                                                                                         Table 4

verb	noun	adjective
intend
perceive
		multiple
predict
	explosion
	conception
	attractiveness
imply
	association
		confident
	simplicity
	exponent
		invariable
respond
	existence

MIND YOUR PRONUNCIATION

In which words can you hear the following sounds?

             [u]                                [ju]

1. course 2. routinely  3. pure 4. put 5. poor 6. quality 7. guide

 

WORD FORMATION

Form the appropriate word for each italicized word in the line

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