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3. On the Dynamical Theory of Heat, with Numerical Results deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit, and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2015

William Thomson M.A.
William Thomson M.A.
Affiliation:
Fellow of St Peter's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.
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Extract

Sir Humphrey Davy, by his experiment of melting two pieces of ice by rubbing them together, established the following proposition:—

“The phenomena of repulsion are not dependent on a peculiar elastic fluid for their existence, or caloric does not exist;” and he concludes that heat consists of a motion excited among the particles of bodies. “To distinguish this motion from others, and to signify the cause of our sensation of heat,” and of the expansion or expansive pressure produced in matter by heat “the name repulsive motion has been adopted.”*

Type
Proceedings 1850-51
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 3 , 1857 , pp. 48 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1857

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References

page no 48 note * From Davy's first work, entitled “An Essay on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light,” published in 1799 in “Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, principally from the West of England; collected by Thomas Beddoes, M.D.,” and republished in Dr Davy's edition of his brother's collected works, vol. ii. London, 1836.

page no 49 note * In May 1842, Mayer announced, in the Annalen of Wöhler and Liebig, that he had raised the temperature of water from 12° to 13° cent., by agitating it. In 1843, Joule announced in the Philosophical Magazine that that “heat is evolved by the passage of water through narrow tubes;” and in the month of August of that year (1843), he announced to the British Association that heat is generated when work is spent in turning a magneto-electric machine, or an electro-magnetic engine. (See his paper “on the Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity and on the Mechanical Value of Heat.” Phil. Mag vol. vxiii. 1843.)

page no 51 note * Poggendorff's Annalen. 1850.