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History 181B: Modern Physics
Class 3 (1/27/03)
New mechanical principles
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| Navigation |
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| Outline |
The post-Newtonian programs
Laplacian physics
Rational mechanics
What is at stake?
The nature of heat
Motion, subtle fluid — or what?
Towards heat as motion
Joule's measurement
Joule's background
Work, force, and energy
Mechanical interests
Conservation of energy and interconvertibility of
forces
Simultaneous discovery
Mathematical formulation |
| Names
and terms |
| Primary |
Secondary |
Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827)
subtle/imponderable fluids
action at a distance
caloric
Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), Analytical Theory of Heat (1822)
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814)
James Joule (1818-1889)
mechanical equivalent of heat
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
energy
Naturphilosophie
Robert Mayer (1814-1878)
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) |
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813),
Analytical Mechanics (1788)
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)
diffusion, Fourier series
vis viva, living force |
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| Assignment |
James Prescott Joule, "On the Mechanical Equivalent
of Heat" (1849), in The Scientific Papers of James Prescott Joule
(London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1887), 298-328.
Read pp. 298-306, skim the middle, read pp. 327-328
(beginning "The following table . . .").
What is the point of the first 5 pages? (Why is
Joule telling us this history?)
Describe the essence of the experiment he was performing.
What did Joule mean by "the mechanical equivalent
of heat"? Why did he go to such efforts to ascertain it?
What would your high-school science teacher think
of Joule's lab write-up?
Extra: What do you think is the point of
the starred footnote on p. 328? |
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Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2003 |