Heat a Mode of Motion

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D. Appleton, 1915 - 591 pages
 

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Page 40 - The result of this beautiful experiment was very striking, and the pleasure it afforded me amply repaid me for all the trouble I had had in contriving and arranging the complicated machinery used in making it. The cylinder...
Page 506 - The sun's rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion which takes place on the surface of the earth. By its heat are produced all winds, and those disturbances in the electric equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise to the phenomena of lightning, and probably also to those of terrestrial magnetism and the aurora.
Page 11 - The amount of heat thus developed would be equal to that derived from the combustion of fourteen globes of coal, each equal to the earth in magnitude. And if> after the stoppage of its...
Page 39 - Fahrenheit's ther69 mometer — could have been furnished by so inconsiderable a quantity of metallic dust, and this merely in consequence of a change in its capacity for heat...
Page 516 - ... melt in air, — the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energy, — the manifestations of life, as well as the display of phenomena, are but the modulations of its rhythm.
Page 506 - ... seems to be secured, so that for ourselves and for long generations after us we have nothing to fear. But the same forces of air and water, and of the volcanic interior, which produced former geological revolutions, and buried one series of living forms after another, act still upon the earth's crust. They more probably will bring about the last day of the human race than those distant cosmical alterations of which we have spoken...
Page 35 - Heat is a very brisk agitation of the insensible parts of the object, which produces in us that sensation, from whence we denominate the object hot ; so what in our sensation is heat, in the object is nothing but motion.
Page 175 - I then flattened two opposite sides of the globe with a heavy hammer, by which the water was necessarily contracted into less space ; a sphere being the figure of largest capacity. And when the hammering had no more effect in making the water shrink, I made use of a mill or press ; till the water impatient of further pressure exuded through the solid lead like a fine dew. I then computed the space lost by the compression, and concluded that this was the extent of compression which the water had suffered...
Page 507 - ... our coal strata. By them the waters of the sea are made to circulate in vapour through the air, and irrigate the land, producing springs and rivers. By them are produced all disturbances of the chemical equilibrium of the elements of nature, which, by a series of compositions and decompositions, give rise to new products, and originate a transfer of materials.
Page 41 - Though there was, in fact, nothing that could justly be considered as surprising in this event, yet I acknowledge fairly that it afforded me a degree of childish pleasure, which, were I ambitious of the reputation of a grave philosopher, I ought most certainly rather to hide than to discover.

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