Abstract
William Thomson (1824–1907)—later known as Lord Kelvin—was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Kelvin is best known for his work on the development of an absolute temperature scale whose units bear his name. What is the difference between an absolute and a practical temperature scale? Practical temperature scales, such as the one developed in 1742 by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, are defined in terms of the physical properties of a particular substance, such as the melting and vaporization points of water. Is it possible to conceive of a temperature scale which in no way references the particular properties of any substance? Kelvin said yes. Inspired by the work of Sadi Carnot,7 Kelvin recognized how the principles of operation of heat engines—in particular the efficiency of the idealized Carnot cycle—might be used to define a temperature scale which is independent of the properties of any particular substance. His ideas were originally published in 1848 in the June 5 Cambridge Philosophical Society Proceedings and also in the October Philosophical Magazine. The following reading selection is from an edited version of this paper which was republished by Kelvin in 1881 in his collection of Mathematical and Physical Papers.
This may justly be termed an absolute scale, since its characteristic is quite independent of the physical properties of any specific substance.
—William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
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Notes
- 1.
Much of the biographical information on Lord Kelvin was obtained from Gray, A., Lord Kelvin: An Account of His Scientific Life and Work, J.M. Dent & Co. and E.P. Dutton & Co., London and New York, 1908.
- 2.
Cambridge Mathematical Journal, vol. ii, May 1841.
- 3.
- 4.
See, for example, Bart, D., and J. Bart, Sir William Thomson, on the 150th Anniversary of the Atlantic Cable, Antique Wireless Association Review, 21, 2008.
- 5.
See “The Tides”, Kelvin’s Evening Lecture to the British Association at the Southampton Meeting, Friday, August 25th, 1882, contained in Eliot, C. W. (Ed.), Scientific Papers: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, vol. 30, P.F. Collier & Son, New York, 1910.
- 6.
Albert Michelson, America’s first nobel-prize winning scientist, enthusiastically endorsed Kelvin’s vortex theory of the atom when explaining his famous speed-of-light measurements in his book Light Waves and their Uses; see Chap. 34 of volume III of the present work.
- 7.
Dover Publications has reprinted Carnot, S., Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat, second ed., John Wiley & Sons and Chapman & Hall, New York and London, 1897.
- 8.
Published in 1824 in a work entitled Réflections sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu, by M.S. Carnot. Having never met with the original work, it is only through a paper by M. Clapeyron, on the same subject, published in the Journal de l’École Polytechnique, Vol. xiv, 1834, and translated in the first volume of Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, that the Author has become acquainted with Carnot’s Theory.—W.T. [Note of Nov. 5th, 1881. A few months later through the kindness of my late colleague Prof. Lewis Gordon, I received a copy of Carnot’s original work and was thus enabled to give to the Royal Society of Edinburgh my “Account of Carnot’s theory” which is reprinted as Art. xli. below. The original work has since been republished, with a biographical notice, Paris, 1878.].
- 9.
An account of the first part of a series of researches undertaken by M. Regnault by order of the French Government, for ascertaining the various physical data of importance in the Theory of the Steam Engine, is just published in the Mémpires de l’Institut, of which it constitutes the twenty-first volume (1847). The second part of the researches has not yet been published. [Note of Nov. 5, 1881. The continuation of these researches has now been published: thus we have for the whole series, Vol. I. in 1847; Vol II. in 1862; and Vol. III. in 1870.].
- 10.
A very important section of Regnault’s work is devoted to this object.
- 11.
Regnault, Relation des Expériences, &c., Fourth Memoir, First Part. The differences, it is remarked by Regnault, would be much more sensible if the graduation were effected on the supposition that the coefficients of expansion of the different gases are equal, instead of being founded on the principle laid down in the text, according to which the freezing-and boiling-points are experimentally determined for each thermometer.
- 12.
This opinion seems to be nearly universally held by those who have written on the subject. A contrary opinion however has been advocated by Mr Joule of Manchester; some very remarkable discoveries which he has made with reference to the generation of heat by the friction of fluids in motion, and some known experiments with magneto-electric machines, seeming to indicate an actual conversion of mechanical effect into caloric. No experiment however is adduced in which the converse operation is exhibited; but it must be confessed that as yet much is involved in mystery with reference to these fundamental questions of natural philosophy.
- 13.
This is what we might anticipate, when we reflect that infinite cold must correspond to a finite number of degrees of the air-thermometer below zero; since, if we push the strict principle of graduation, stated above, sufficiently far, we should arrive at a point corresponding to the volume of air being reduced to nothing, which would be marked as −273° of the scale (\(-100/0.366\), if \(0.366\) be the coefficient of expansion); and therefore −273° of the air-thermometer is a point which cannot be reached at any finite temperature, however low.
- 14.
[Note of Nov. 4, 1881. This table (reduced from metres to feet) was repeated in my “Account of Carnot’s Theory of the Motive power of Heat,” republished as Article xli. below, in §38 of which it will be found.].
- 15.
check this KKK.
- 16.
Unfortunately, such an air thermometer is of limited utility, since the level of the liquid depends not only on the temperature of the air in the bulb, but also on the local atmospheric pressure which presses down on the surface of the liquid pool. Thus, it must be used in conjunction with a barometer so to compensate for varying atmospheric pressures.
- 17.
For these laboratory experiments, you might consider the Absolute Zero Demonstration apparatus (Model #WLS1828-89), available form Sargent Welch, Chicago, IL.
- 18.
- 19.
This is discussed in Carnot, S., Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat, second ed., John Wiley & Sons and Chapman & Hall, New York and London, 1897; see Chap. 3 of the present volume.
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Kuehn, K. (2016). Engines as Thermometers. In: A Student's Guide Through the Great Physics Texts. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21828-1_5
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