The formation of ice and the grained structure of glaciers

In the following pages I have the honour to lay before the Royal Society the results of a lengthy research on the formation of ice and the grained structure of glaciers, which may serve as a complement to the previous investigations on the same subject published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ and ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society by Forbes, Tyndall and Huxley, Tyndall, Faraday, T. Graham, J. F. Main, J. C. McConnel and D. A. Kidd, and elsewhere by Guyot, Agassiz, James Thomson, and Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), Hermann and Adolf Schlagintweit, Person, Leydolt, Rüdorff, Bertin, Grad and A. Dupré, Moseley, A. Heim, J. T. Bottomley, K. R Koch and Klocke, Forel, Ed. Hagenbach-Bischoff, E. von Drygalski, Mügge, H. Hess and others. 1. It will be convenient at the outset to define the precise meaning with which it is proposed to employ certain words, some of which are in vague popular use, while others are less familiar or new.

Sir William Thomson and the Intercept Method

10.1017/s0373463300040236 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 91-98

Author(s):

Charles H. Cotter

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Royal Society ◽

New Method ◽

William Thomson ◽

Lord Kelvin ◽

Short Method ◽

Royal Society Of London

The year 1971 marked the first centenary of the publication of a paper on navigation which appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in which the author, Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) described a new method of determining an astronomical position line. The method was impracticable and was not, therefore, adopted by practical seamen. Nevertheless, its design is ingenious and interesting, and an investigation of its principles adds lustre to the genius of its inventor—reputedly one of the most eminent philosophers of the nineteenth century. Although the method failed in the eyes of the mariners for whom it was intended, Thomson sparked off an interest in short-method tables which has persisted even to the present day.

The ‘Universal’ Sea and Air Navigation Tables and the a and b Almanac

10.1017/s0373463300032896 ◽

1951 ◽

Vol 4 (02) ◽

pp. 109-116

Author(s):

F. Radler de Aquino

Keyword(s):

Royal Society ◽

Spherical Coordinates ◽

Heavenly Body ◽

William Thomson ◽

Spherical Triangles ◽

One Year ◽

Lord Kelvin ◽

First Time

The position of a point on the surface will then be expressed by two spherical coordinates: namely, ist, the distance of the point from the primitive circle measured on a secondary; 2nd, the distance intercepted on the primitive circle between this secondary and some given point of the primitive circle assumed as the origin of coordinates.—William Chauvenet,Manual of Spherical and Practical Astronomy(1896).On 16 May 1870, exactly eighty years before this paper was written, Lord Kelvin, then Sir William Thomson, worked out an epoch-making example of how to find the hour angle and azimuth of a heavenly body by inspection, in order to facilitate the use of Captain Thomas Sumner's method at sea. His work was published one year later in theProceedings of the Royal Society, and in it he describes a page of his new Tables for Facilitating Sumner's Method at Sea. These tables, comprising nine pages, were made public on 11 November 1875 and were published in London in May of the following year; from them have been derived all modern navigation tables based on right-angled spherical triangles. Kelvin then used, for the first time, Greenwich hour angle in arc and assumed latitudes and longitudes. (The writer has himself used G.H.A. in arc since 1902 and assumed positions since 1908.)

The Conception and Development of Weir's Diagram

10.1017/s0373463300044416 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 517-520

Author(s):

Charles H. Cotter

Keyword(s):

Royal Society ◽

Magnetic Compass ◽

Spherical Trigonometry ◽

Independent Variables ◽

William Thomson ◽

The Subject ◽

Just a century ago, in 1876, Patrick Weir, an officer of a vessel trading between London and Australia, conceived the idea of a diagram that might facilitate finding the Sun's true azimuth for the purpose of checking the magnetic compass. Some thirteen, years later Captain Weir's Diagram was the subject of a paper communicated by Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In his paper Weir outlined the train of reasoning by which he succeeded in constructing a novel diagram which was described by Professor P. G. Tait as ‘a singularly elegant construction which, not only puts in a new and attractive light one of the most awkward of the problems of spherical trigonometry, but it practically gives in a single-page diagram the whole content of the two volumes of Burdwood's Azimuth Tables’. Tait also remarked that the method supplied an interesting graphical plane construction of a function of three independent variables.

A letter by William Thomson, F. R. S., on the ‘Thomson effect’

Notes and Records the Royal Society journal of the history of science ◽

10.1098/rsnr.1971.0020 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 229-232

Keyword(s):

Electrical Conduction ◽

Royal Society ◽

Mobile Element ◽

Public University ◽

The State ◽

Thomson Effect ◽

The Public ◽

University Library ◽

William Thomson ◽

Of two letters written by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) to the Genevese physicist Auguste de la Rive (1801-1873, For. Mem. R.S.) which are preserved in the public University Library of Geneva, one is of distinct interest. This letter (M.S. 2319), written on 17 December 1856, throws sidelights on the discovery of the ‘Thomson Effect’ (originally described in his paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1851) and on the state of his thought about the nature of the mobile element involved in electrical conduction.

Lord Kelvin and His Compass

10.1017/s037346330003318x ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 122-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

W. E. May

Keyword(s):

Royal Society ◽

Trade Mark ◽

Final Part ◽

Unpublished Paper ◽

House Of Lords ◽

William Thomson ◽

The Subject ◽

Obituary Notice ◽

Lord Kelvin ◽

Patent Design

It is now more than thirty years since Commander W. E. May, R.N. (formerly of the Admiralty Compass Observatory), drafted this hitherto unpublished paper, recording his opinions based on a study of documents made available to him in 1947 by Messrs Kelvin, Bottomley and Baird. The documents referred to in the paper are:The Thomson v. Moore case as presented to the House of Lords in the Thomson v. Moore case (Patent Design and Trade Mark Cases, Vol. VII, No. 36.)The case of Thomson v. Hughes (Patent Design and Trade Mark Cases, Vol. VII, Nos. 9 and 22.)Report of Proof of case of Kelvin v. Whyte Thomson &. Co.Bound volume of patent specifications referred to in the last named.It is a curious habit of editors and publishers to invite well-known persons to write articles on subjects outside their normal orbit. Thus in 1874 Sir William Thomson was invited to write for Good Words an article on the mariner's compass. He took up the task and soon realized that he did not know enough of the subject to complete the article. He then began to study the compass and the final part of the article was published in 1879. Such is one of Lord Kelvin's explanations of how he came to interest himself. In 1885, in an affidavit for the Moore case, he said that he took up the study of the compass in 1871, whilst elsewhere he said that it was the necessity of writing for the Royal Society an obituary notice on Archibald Smith, who died in 1872, which first turned his attention to compasses.

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)

Block by Block: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198851547.003.0032 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 386-421

Author(s):

Robert T. Hanlon

Keyword(s):

Energy Dissipation ◽

Heat Engine ◽

Conserved Quantity ◽

Rational Approach ◽

Hermann Von Helmholtz ◽

William Thomson ◽

James Thomson ◽

Lord Kelvin ◽

Caloric Theory

Being raised on the caloric theory in which heat is a conserved quantity, Thomson faced challenges in accepting Clausius’ analysis of Carnot’s heat engine. Once he finally overcame these challenges, helped by collaborating with his brother James, Thomson accepted and then furthered Clausius’ work by proposing a different perspective of Clausius’ 2nd Principle and the 2nd Law of Tthermodynamics: energy dissipation. This chapter concludes with the role Hermann von Helmholtz played in bringing a rational approach to a thermodynamic science based on cause–effect.

Charles Darwin's Manuscript of Pangenesis

The British Journal for the History of Science ◽

10.1017/s0007087400001497 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 251-263 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

R. C. Olby

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Theory ◽

Theory Of Evolution ◽

William Thomson ◽

Lord Kelvin ◽

Short Time

Darwin only published one account of his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, and that is to be found in chapter xxvii of his book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, the first edition of which is dated 1868. The absence of any earlier account in Darwin's works has led some to assume that he had recourse to this hypothesis only a short time before the published date of the book containing it, and on the basis of this assumption they have asserted that he produced it as a part of his defence of the theory of evolution against the criticisms made of it by the physicists Sir William Thomson, afterwards Lord Kelvin, and Fleeming Jenkin. But to make such an assertion is to ignore the fact that Darwin had already sent his manuscript of pangenesis to Huxley in the year 1865, two years before Fleeming Jenkin's article appeared and three years before Lord Kelvin openly attacked the evolutionary theory. The discovery of this manuscript of pangenesis has, therefore, some importance, for it should reveal Darwin's conception of pangenesis in 1865.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON (LORD KELVIN),THOMSON AND TAIT

A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials ◽

10.1017/cbo9781107280083.004 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 358-490

Author(s):

Isaac Todhunter

Keyword(s):

William Thomson ◽

God and the Uniformity of Nature

Science Without God? ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198834588.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 97-110

Author(s):

Matthew Stanley

Keyword(s):

Natural World ◽

Fine Tuning ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

James Clerk Maxwell ◽

Modern Physics ◽

William Thomson ◽

Alternative Approaches ◽

Religiously Based ◽

John Tyndall ◽

Today the laws of physics are often seen as evidence for a naturalistic worldview. However, historically, physics was usually considered compatible with belief in God. Foundations of physics such as thermodynamics, uniformity of nature, and causality were seen as religiously based by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. These were usually interpreted as evidence of design by a creative deity. In the late nineteenth century, John Tyndall and other scientific naturalists made the argument that these foundations were more sympathetic to a non-religious understanding of the natural world. With the success of this approach, twentieth-century religious physicists tended to stress non-material and experiential connections rather than looking for evidence of design. Later parts of that century saw a revival of natural theological arguments in the form of the anthropic principle and the fine-tuning problem. While modern physics is naturalistic, this was not inevitable and there were several alternative approaches common in earlier times.

The Gibbs-Thomson Equation

The Equations of Materials ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198851875.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 109-140

Author(s):

Brian Cantor

Keyword(s):

Natural Philosophy ◽

Bulk Material ◽

Equilibrium Shape ◽

Surface Adsorption ◽

Internal Interface ◽

Cambridge University ◽

The Third ◽

The World ◽

William Thomson ◽

The external surface of a material has an atomic or molecular structure that is different from the bulk material. So does any internal interface within a material. Because of this, the energy of a material or any grain or particle within it increases with the curvature of its bounding surface, as described by the Gibbs-Thomson equation. This chapter explains how surfaces control the nucleation of new phases during reactions such as solidification and precipitation, the coarsening and growth of particles during heat treatment, the equilibrium shape of crystals, and the surface adsorption and segregation of solutes and impurities. The Gibbs-Thomson was predated by a number of related equations; it is not clear whether it is named after J. J. Thomson or William Thomson (Lord Kelvin); and it was not put into its current usual form until after Gibbs’, Thomson’s and Kelvin’s time. J. J. Thomson was the third Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge University. He discovered the electron, which had a profound impact on the world, notably via Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, and subsequent building of the world’s first electricity distribution network. William Thomson was Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University. He made major scientific developments, notably in thermodynamics, and he helped build the first trans-Atlantic undersea telegraph. Because of his scientific pre-eminence, the absolute unit of temperature, the degree Kelvin, is named after him.