Lord Kelvin: An account of his scientific life and workGray, Andrew
Science
Lord Kelvin: An account of his scientific life and work
Gray, Andrew
Kelvin, William Thomson, Baron, 1824-1907
Again, we find, a page or two earlier in the "Account of Carnot's
Theory," the question asked with respect to the heat evolved in the
circuit of a magneto-electric machine, "Is the heat which is evolved in
one part of the closed conductor merely transferred from those parts
which are subject to the inducing influence?" and the statement made
that Joule had examined this question, and decided that it must be
answered in the negative. But Thomson goes on to say, "Before we can
finally conclude that heat is absolutely generated in such operations,
it would be necessary to prove that the inducing magnet does not become
lower in temperature and thus compensate for the heat evolved in the
conductor."
Here, apparently, the idea of work done in moving the magnet, or the
conductor in the magnetic field, is not present to Thomson's mind; for
if it had been, the idea that the work thus spent might have its
equivalent, in part, at least, in heat generated in the circuit, would
no doubt have occurred to him and been stated. This idea had been used
just a year before by Helmholtz, in his essay "Die Erhaltung der Kraft,"
to account for the heat produced in the circuit by the induced current,
that is, to answer the first question put above in the sense in which
Joule answered it. The subject, however, was fully worked out by Thomson
in a paper published in the _Philosophical Magazine_ for December 1851,
to which we shall refer later.
Tables of the work performed by various steam engines working between
different stated temperatures were given at the close of the "Account,"
and compared with the theoretical "duty" as calculated for Carnot's
ideal perfect engine. Of course the theoretical duty was calculated from
the temperatures of the boiler and condenser; the much greater fall of
temperature from the furnace to the boiler was neglected as inevitable,
so that the loss involved in that fall is not taken account of. Carnot's
theory gave for the theoretical duty of one heat unit (equivalent to
1390 foot-pounds of work) 440 foot-pounds for boiler at 140° C. and
condenser at 30° C.; and the best performance recorded was 253
foot-pounds, giving a percentage of 57.5 per cent. The worst was that of
common engines consuming 12 lb. of coal per horse-power per hour, and
gave 38.1 foot-pounds, or a percentage of 8.6 per cent. These
percentages become on the dynamical theory 68 and 10.3, since the true
theoretical duty for the heat unit is only 371 foot-pounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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