Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This does not mean, however, that they show the exact dimensions of the molecule; it means an estimate of the limits of size within which the actual size of the molecule may lie. These limits, Lord Kelvin estimates, are about the one-ten-millionth of a centimetre for the maximum, and the one-one-hundred-millionth of a centimetre for the minimum.
Lord Kelvin himself holds all such speculations utterly in abeyance. "The vortex theory," he says, "is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about a dream."*1*
It reminded me forcibly of what Lord Kelvin, then plain William Thompson, and Professor Blackburn had done when spending a summer vacation at the seaside, while they were undergraduates of Cambridge University.
Sooth the tune to me, he said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to sooth him Kelvin Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man. I cannae bear the sight of it, he'll never play it mair. O my lamb, come home to me, I'm all by my lane now." The rest was in a religious vein and quite conventional.
"Not in dead matter do we live," said Lord Kelvin, in his recent address before the British scientists, "but we live and move in the creative and directing power that science compels to be accepted as an article of faith. We are forced to believe, with absolute confidence, in a directive power, in an influence other than the physical, dynamic, and electric powers.
But I observed that Lord Kelvin and the other more distinguished men of science said nothing during this discussion. The truly learned man is the truly wise man. They were not going to set up the theories without sufficient facts to substain them. The one fact that the gold was here was all they had at present.
Now nobody has any doubt on these matters, and clairvoyance, thought-transference, and telepathy may, not inconceivably, be as fortunate in the long run as meteorites, or as the more usual phenomena of hypnotism. It is only Lord Kelvin who now maintains, or lately maintained, that in hypnotism there is nothing at all but fraud and malobservation.
Having made this mental calculation, I knew that my weight, being 150 pounds on the earth, should on this asteroid be an ounce and a half. Curious to see whether fact would bear out theory, I had myself weighed with a spring balance. Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin and the other distinguished scientists stood by watching the operation with great interest.
Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making an indefensible mistake. But nothing could be done. Just as the first railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly declared to be a telegraph.
One of the most startling experiences that I have ever had was one day when we were navigating space about half way between the earth and Mars. I had stepped outside the car with Lord Kelvin, both of us, of course, wearing our air-tight suits. We were perfectly well aware what would be the consequence of detaching ourselves from the car as we moved along.
Word Of The Day