Heat, a Mode of Motion

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D. Appleton and Company, 1873 - 532 pages
 

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Page 50 - When I say of Motion that it is as the genus of which heat is a species, I would be understood to mean, not that heat generates motion or that motion generates heat (though both are true in certain cases), but that Heat itself, its essence and quiddity, is Motion and nothing else...
Page 92 - ... the particles move round their own axes, and separate from each other, penetrating in right lines through space. Temperature may be conceived to depend upon the velocities of the vibrations; increase of capacity on the motion being performed in greater space ; and the diminution of temperature during the conversion of solids into fluids or gases, may be explained on the idea of the loss of vibratory motion, in consequence of the revolution of particles round their axes, at the moment when the...
Page 446 - 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 91 - The immediate cause of the phenomena of heat then is motion, and the laws of its communication are precisely the same, as the laws of the communication of motion.
Page 335 - A medium also embraces our atoms. Within our atmosphere exists a second and a finer atmosphere in which the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen hang like suspended grains. This finer atmosphere unites not only atom with atom, but star with star ; and the light of all suns and of all stars is in reality a kind of music propagated through this interstellar air. This image must be clearly seized, and then we have to advance a step. We must not only figure our atoms suspended in this medium, but we must figure...
Page 335 - ... atom, but star with star ; and the light of all suns and of all stars is in reality a kind of music propagated through this interstellar air. This image must be clearly seized, and then we have to advance a step. We must not only figure our atoms suspended in this medium, but we must figure them vibrating in it. In this motion of the atoms consists what we call their heat. " What is heat in us," as Locke has perfectly expressed it, " is in the body heated nothing but motion.
Page 54 - It is hardly necessary to add that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION.
Page 297 - The vessels and wires thus disposed make no change in the action of the instrument; the thermo-electric current being freely transmitted, as before, from the pile to the galvanometer. But if, by means of a wire F, a communication be established between the two vessels, part of the current will pass through this wire and return to the pile. The quantity of electricity circulating in the galvanometer will be thus diminished, and with it the deflection of the needle. Suppose, then, that by this artifice...
Page 91 - ... lower temperature, that is, can give an expansive motion to its particles, it is a probable inference that its own particles are possessed of motion ; but, as there is no change in the position of its parts as long as its temperature is uniform, the motion, if it exist, must be a vibratory or undulatory motion, or a motion of the particles round their axes, or a motion of particles round each other.
Page 135 - the wild stone-avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and thunder down the declivities with a vehemence almost sufficient to stun the observer. I have also seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to hurt the fragile spangles of which they were composed ; yet to produce from aqueous vapor a quantity which a child could carry of that tender material demands an exertion of energy competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest stone-avalanche I have ever seen, and pitch them to twice the...

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