Lord Kelvin (1824 - 1907)

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Term Paper Title	Lord Kelvin (1824 - 1907)
# of Words	648
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.59

Lord Kelvin (1824 - 1907)

Lord Kelvin (1824 - 1907)

William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) was born June 26, 1824 in Belfast, Ireland,
and was part of a large family whose mother died when he was six. His father
taught Kelvin and his brothers mathematics to a level beyond that of university
courses of the time.

Kelvin was somewhat of a genius, and had his first papers published in 1840.
These papers contained an argument defending the work of Fourier (Fourier
transforms), which at the time was being heavily criticized by British
scientists. He proved Fourier’s theories to be right. In 1839 Kelvin wrote an
essay which he called " An Essay on the Figure of the Earth." He used this essay
as a source and inspiration for ideas all his life and won an award from the
University of Glasgow in Scotland. Kelvin remained at the University for the
rest of his working life.

Kelvin first defined the absolute temperature scale in 1847, which was later
named after him. In 1851 he published the paper, "On the Dynamical Theory of
Heat", and in the same year was elected to the Royal Society. This work
contained his ideas and version of the second law of thermodynamics as well as
James Joule’s idea of the mechanical equivalent of heat. This idea claimed that
heat and motion were combined, which now is taken as second nature. At the time,
heat was thought to have been a fluid of some kind.

Kelvin also maintained an interest in the age of the sun and calculated values
for it. He assumed that the sun produced its radiant energy from the
gravitational potential of matter falling into the sun. In collaboration with
Hermann von Helmholtz, he calculated and published in 1853 a value of 50 million
years. He also had an interest in the age of the earth, and he calculated that
the earth was a maximum of 400 million years old. These calculations were based
on the rate of cooling of a globe of matter after first solidification occurs (
such as the be...

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