NATURE SERIES
POPULAR LECTURES
AND
ADDRESSES
BY
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.S.E., &c .
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, AND FELLOW OF ST. PETER'S
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
CONSTITUTION OF MATTER
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
L ondon
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1891
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
First Edition, 1889. Second Edition, 1891.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................. 4
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION................................................................................................ 5
CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. ................................................................................................................. 6
[Friday Evening Lecture before the Royal Institution, January 29, 1886 (Proc. Roy. Inst., vol. xi.
part III)].
APPENDIX A. —ON CERTAIN CURIOUS MOTIONS OBSERVABLE ON THE SURFACES OF WINE AND
OTHER ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS.............................................................................................................................. 24
[A paper by Professor James Thomson, read before Section A of the British Association at the
Glasgow Meeting of 1855: Brit. Assoc. Report for 1855, Part II. pp. 16, 17]
APPENDIX B.— NOTE ON GRAVITY AND COHESION........................................................................................... 25
[A paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh and published in Proc. R. S. E. April 21,
1862.]
APPENDIX C. — ON THE EQUILIBRIUM OF VAPOUR AT A CURVED SURFACE OF LIQUID......................... 27
[A paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh and published in Proc. R. S. E. February
7th, 1870 (vol. vii. pp. 63-68).]
APPENDIX D. — ON MEASUREMENTS OF THE AMOUNT OF OIL NECESSARY IN ORDER TO CHECK THE
MOTIONS OF CAMPHOR UPON WATER.............................................................................................................. 31
[A paper by Lord Rayleigh, Sec. R. S., read before the Royal Society, March 27, 1890, and
reproduced here by his permission.]
ELECTRICAL UNITS OF MEASUREMENT. ..................................................................................... 34
[A Lecture delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers on May 3, 1883; being one of a series of
Six Lectures on "The Practical Applications of Electricity;"
THE SORTING DEMON OF MAXWELL............................................................................................ 49
[Abstract of a Friday evening Lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, February 28,
1879 (Proc. R. I. vol. ix. p. 113).]
ELASTICITY VIEWED AS POSSIBLY A MODE OF MOTION. ...................................................... 51
[Abstract of a Friday evening Lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, March 4,
1881 (Proc. R. I. vol. ix. p. 520).]
THE SIZE OF ATOMS........................................................................................................................... 53
[Friday evening Lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, February 3, 1883 (Proc. R.
I. vol. x. p. 185).]
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STEPS TOWARDS A KINETIC THEORY OF MATTER................................................................... 73
[Opening Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, Montreal
meeting, 1884 (Brit. Assoc. Report, p. 613).]
THE SIX GATEWAYS OF KNOWLEDGE.......................................................................................... 82
[Presidential Address to the Birmingham and Midland Institute, delivered in the Town Hall,
Birmingham, on October 3rd, 1883.]
THE WAVE THEORY OF LIGHT. .......................................................................................................93
[A Lecture delivered at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, under the auspice of the Franklin
Institute, September 29th, 1884.]
ON THE AGE OF THE SUN'S HEAT................................................................................................. 105
[Reprinted by permission from "Macmillan's Magazine," March, 1862.]
PART I. ON THE SECULAR COOLING OF THE SUN. ............................................................................................. 106
PART II. ON THE SUN'S PRESENT TEMPERATURE............................................................................................... 109
PART III. ON THE ORIGIN AND TOTAL AMOUNT OF THE SUN'S HEAT. ......................................................... 109
ON THE SUN'S HEAT......................................................................................................................... 111
[A Friday evening Lecture delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain on January 21,
1887: see also Good Words for March and April 1887.]
ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENT. ...................................................................................................... 125
[Address before Section of Mechanics at the Conferences held in connection with the Special
Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at the South Kensington Museum, May 17th, 1876,
under the Presidency of Dr. C. W. Siemens.]
APPENDIX TO "STEPS TOWARDS A KINETIC THEORY OF MATTER" (PP. 73—81). ........... 134
INDEX................................................................................................................................................... 135
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PREFACE
SHORTLY after the delivery of my lecture "On Capillarity" at the Royal Institution, in January
1886, it was suggested to me by Mr. Lockyer, that it might be advisable to make that lecture more
easily and more conveniently accessible than it could be in the "Transactions of the Royal Institution"
or in the pages of Nature. It was accordingly arranged to bring out, as one of the Nature series, a small
volume containing the lecture "On Capillarity," together with several other papers pertinent to the
subject.
While the earlier sheets of this book were passing through the printer's hands, it occurred to me
that it might be well to reissue in a collected form several other lectures and addresses of a popular
character, which I have given from time to time, and which could not find a fitting place in my "Reprint
of Mathematical and Physical Papers," now being published by the Cambridge University Press. After
consideration it was decided to change the character of the proposed volume "On Capillarity," and to
increase its size and make it the first of a series of three volumes to constitute a reprint of all my
popular lectures and addresses.
The order in which the various articles are arranged, both in the present volume and in those
which are to follow, is, generally speaking, according to the subject-matter. Thus in the present volume
are included lectures concerned with the ultimate constitution of matter. The second volume will
include subjects connected with geology, and the third will be chiefly concerned with phenomena of
the ocean and maritime affairs.
The lectures are reprinted practically in the form in which they originally appeared, the only
alterations being slight verbal changes introduced in a few cases solely for the sake of clearness.
WILLIAM THOMSON.
THE UNIVERSITY, GLASGOW,
Dec. 21, 1888.
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PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION
BY kind permission of Lord Rayleigh his recently published paper describing measurements of
the amounts of oil necessary in order to check the motions of camphor upon water is included in this
second edition of the present volume, as an appendix to the article on "Capillary Attraction." It is also
of great importance in connection with the article on "The Size of Atoms" which appears in another
part of the volume.
I have added an appendix to the article entitled "Steps Towards a Kinetic Theory of Matter,"
which may be read with interest, and possibly with some degree of satisfaction, by any one who may
have believed that a cloud had been thrown over the kinetic theory of gases by the supposed difficulty
brought forward in that article.
The third volume promised in the preface to the first edition of the first volume will, for
printer's reasons, be published before the second volume. It is now completely in type and will appear
almost immediately. The second volume will, I hope, be published in the course of a year or two.
WILLIAM THOMSON.
THE UNIVERSITY, GLASGOW,
Feb. 16, 1891.
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