Reading an old physics book and

[jmcginnis]

The book is "The New Physics and Its Evolution" by Lucien Poincare, who happens to be Henri Poincare's cousin, and I came across a paragraph that explained an experiment that has me baffled.

Anyone know to which experiment he was referring?

Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but here it goes...

The famous experiment of the blows with a stick by which it was demonstrated to a
sceptical[sic] philosopher that an outer world existed, only proves, in reality, the existence of energy, and not that of matter.

The book is open domain, here is a link: http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/5/2/0/15207/15207.htm"

The paragraph in question is under the chapter titled Sec. 2. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY and is in the 24th paragraph in that section, about half way through the paragraph.


Sorry if this question doesn't fall under this category, but I really must know!


Thanks,
Jesse

 

[jack action]

It seems to be a «thought» experiment by WILHELM OSTWALD as reported in http://books.google.ca/books?id=xyI...resnum=2&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false", on september 20, 1895. See p. 598 of previous link for more detail.

 

[jmcginnis]

It seems to be a «thought» experiment by WILHELM OSTWALD as reported in http://books.google.ca/books?id=xyI...resnum=2&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false", on september 20, 1895. See p. 598 of previous link for more detail.

Bravo. That does seem to answer my question quite nicely.

For anyone interested, it appears that this is what the experiment is in reference to:

"Imagine that you are struck with a stick. What do you feel, the stick or its energy?"