3 ms·
Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility
by XorNot 3y ago
Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility of the time.
The same is true of quantum mechanics: physicists were excited about it, but it went going to make existing experimental results and predictions incorrect in context.
The Bohr model of the atom is completely "wrong" but it's still useful enough to foundational in understanding nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.
- foldr 3y agoYes, scientific progress tends to be empirically conservative. But people outside science (like the Eng Lit major) are often less interested in specific predictions than in the overall picture of reality painted by our current best scientific theories. This picture does change quite radically from time to time. The history of different models of the atom (going back to the radically incorrect 'plum pudding' model) is a good example. To point this out is not to attack science. Indeed, science would be far less interesting and exciting if its entire history was nothing but a sequence of small and incremental refinements.