Lord Kelvin : his life and work / by Alexander Russell.

  • Alexander Russell
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lord Kelvin : his life and work / by Alexander Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    most keenly with the natural disappointment of his father, who had done so much for him, but he had too much common sense to attach much real importance to a slight difference in the number of marks between him- self and his rival. At the Smith’s prize examination their relative positions were reversed, Thomson being first. The papers set in this examination were admir- ably fair, and might still be set to mathematical physicists. One of the questions in Eamshaw’s paper was to give a physical analogy between fluid motion, attraction of bodies, and temperature. This seems to have been suggested by one of Thomson’s owm papers which had only recently been pubhshed. Other ques- tions about elastic solids and waves in canals must have directly appealed to Thomson. In after years he was fond of discussing some of these in his senior mathematical class. The papers set about this period in the Tripos and Smith’s prize examinations are exceptionally good. Later on, when the various branches of science got more speciahsed, the questions became much more lengthy, and the element of luck entered more largely into the competition. The later questions also are much less interesting. Compare, for- instance, Whewell’s ques- tion, “Does the attraction of the Moon affect the position of a plumb-line ? ” and the kindly hint attached that you are to take into account the motion of the tides, with the long questions sometimes set later in the cen- tury, the meaning of which is not always clear. The answer to Wliewell’s question is, that the plumb-line is affected owing to the variation in the height of the ocean, causing a small and variable declination of a plumb-hne situated, for instance, on the shore. The com- plete discussion of the problem is by no means easy, but it gives plenty of scope to the student to show his abihty.
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