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It makes no sense, unless you think back to Lawrence’s long march across the desert to Aqaba. It is easier to dress soldiers in bright uniforms and have them march to the sound of a fife-and-drum corps than it is to have them ride six hundred miles through snake-infested desert on the back of camels. It is easier and far more satisfying to retreat and compose yourself after every score—and execute perfectly choreographed plays—than to swarm about, arms flailing, and contest every inch of the basketball court. Underdog strategies are hard.
David and Goliath
Malcolm Gladwell
Planck solved the radiation problem by proposing that the vibrating particles can only radiate at certain energies. The permitted energies would be determined by a new number—“a universal constant,” he says, “which I called h. Since it had the dimension of action (energy X time), I gave it the name, elementary quantum of action.”278 (Quantum is the neuter form of the Latin word quantus, meaning “how great.”) Only those limited and finite energies could appear which were whole-number multiples of hv: of the frequency ν times Planck’s h. Planck calculated h to be a very small number, close to the modern value of 6.63 × 10−27 erg-seconds. Universal h soon acquired its modern name: Planck’s constant. Planck, a thoroughgoing conservative, had no taste for pursuing the radical consequences of his radiation formula. Someone else did: Albert Einstein. In a paper in 1905 that eventually won for him the Nobel Prize, Einstein connected Planck’s idea of limited, discontinuous energy levels to the problem of the photoelectric effect. Light shone on certain metals knocks electrons free; the effect is applied today in the solar panels that power spacecraft. But the energy of the electrons knocked free of the metal does not depend, as common sense would suggest, on the brightness of the light. It depends instead on the color of the light—on its frequency. Einstein saw a quantum condition in this odd fact. He proposed the heretical possibility that light, which years of careful scientific experiment had demonstrated to travel in waves, actually traveled in small individual packets—particles—which he called “energy quanta.” Such photons (as they are called today), he wrote, have a distinctive energy hv and they transfer most of that energy to the electrons they strike on the surface of the metal. A brighter light thus releases more electrons but not more energetic electrons; the energy of the electrons released depends on hv and so on the frequency of the light. Thus Einstein advanced Planck’s quantum idea from the status of a convenient tool for calculation to that of a possible physical fact. With these advances in understanding Bohr was able to confront the problem of the mechanical instability of Rutherford’s model of the atom. In July, at the time of the “little paper ready to show to Rutherford,” he already had his central idea. It was this: that since classical mechanics predicted that an atom like Rutherford’s, with a small, massive central nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons, would be unstable, while in fact atoms are among the most stable of systems, classical mechanics was inadequate to describe such systems and would have to give way to a quantum approach. Planck had introduced quantum principles to save the laws of thermodynamics; Einstein had extended the quantum idea to light; Bohr now proposed to lodge quantum principles within the atom itself.
Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes
Long ago, Buffett said that an investment lifetime scorecard should include just twenty punches. My funds have never, ever held so few stocks. Even when I see nothing on offer that Buffett would completely approve of, my mandate is to act. I don’t see the world in black and white, only in shades of gray. Plus, I’m curious and interested in learning, and so I often test the boundaries of my circle of competence. I try to see things from others’ perspective and uncover the good in people before I judge them. In the process, I’ve met a few bad guys. Permanence and resilience intrigue me, but experimentation and adaptability fascinate me. While I’m more patient than many, I’m not immune to the exhilaration of a sudden windfall. Still, I do want to invest safely. I won’t buy an asset unless it is: 1. Safe from rash decisions 2. Safe from misunderstanding of facts 3. Safe from foreseeable fiduciary misuse 4. Safe from obsolescence, commoditization, and overleverage 5. Safe when the future doesn’t turn out as imagined
Big Money Thinks Small
Joel Tillinghast
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