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Kelvin also wrote under the pseudonym "P. Q. R." William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FRSE (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) [7] was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. [8] He was the professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, where he undertook ...
The heat death paradox, also known as thermodynamic paradox, Clausius' paradox, and Kelvin's paradox, [1] is a reductio ad absurdum argument that uses thermodynamics to show the impossibility of an infinitely old universe. It was formulated in February 1862 by Lord Kelvin and expanded upon by Hermann von Helmholtz and William John Macquorn Rankine.
Lord Kelvin expressed the second law in several wordings. It is impossible for a self-acting machine, unaided by any external agency, to convey heat from one body to another at a higher temperature. It is impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature ...
To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye, and cock a baleful glance at me! Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said, "Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source was discovered.
Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that appears to disprove the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. [1] In his first letter, Maxwell referred to the entity as a "finite being" or a "being who can play a game of skill with the molecules". Lord Kelvin would later call it a "demon". [2]
The vortex theory of the atom was a 19th-century attempt by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) to explain why the atoms recently discovered by chemists came in only relatively few varieties but in very great numbers of each kind. Based on the idea of stable, knotted vortices in the ether or aether, it contributed an important mathematical legacy.
Olbers's paradox, also known as the dark night paradox, is an argument in astrophysics and physical cosmology that says that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the assumption of an infinite and eternal static universe. In the hypothetical case that the universe is static, homogeneous at a large scale, and populated by an infinite ...
The Kelvin scale was designed to be easily converted from the Celsius scale (symbol °C). Any temperature in degrees Celsius can be converted to kelvin by adding 273.15. The 19th century British scientist Lord Kelvin first developed and proposed the scale.