Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 208 Chapter 156

It is hard to say whether Chen Muwu suddenly praised the ancients when he was explaining the principle of the motor, whether it was a whim by chance, or it was intentional after he saw old Thomson enter the door quietly.

However, the physicist he most wanted to mention in his remarks was not Newton, Maxwell, or Cavendish, but Lord Kelvin at the very beginning.

If these famous British physicists are calculated using the traditional Chinese master-student relationship, then Rutherford is Chen Muwu's master, and Rutherford's master, Old Thomson, is Chen Muwu's master.

Old Thomson's master was Lord Rayleigh III, and Rayleigh III's master was none other than Kelvin.

If it is substituted into the phrase "a teacher for a day, a father for life", then Rutherford is Chen Muwu's father, Old Thomson is his grandfather, Rayleigh III is his great-grandfather, and Kelvin is his great-grandfather.

Chen Muwu mainly traveled a little later. When he came to this world in 1922, Rayleigh III had passed away for three years, let alone Kelvin who died 15 years ago.

So in his vein, Chen Muwu only met his master, Old Thomson.

Rutherford was a little bit lucky. Not only did he meet his master Rayleigh III, he also had a few encounters with Kelvin.

Rutherford left New Zealand for the UK in 1895, studied at Cambridge University for two years, and was recommended by Thomson Sr. to McGill University in Canada in 1898, and did not return to the UK until 1909.

Although Kelvin lived until 1907, there were not many opportunities and times for the two to meet.

In 1904, Rutherford, who was on a business trip from Canada to England, was invited to give a lecture on radioactivity at the Royal Society.

In his speech, Rutherford intends to talk about the fact that radioactivity will generate a huge amount of energy. The temperature inside the earth is very high, precisely because of the continuous radioactive reactions in it, thus obtaining energy.

The reason why he brought up this matter in the radioactivity lecture is because the topic of the age of the earth has always been a hot topic in the academic circle.

Since Newton, people have always wondered how old the earth is.

The method Newton gave was to find an iron ball with a diameter of one inch, heat it to a red-hot state, then cool it to room temperature, and measure the time it takes for the cooling process.

Finally, the data of the earth is substituted into the iron ball, and the life span of the earth is calculated to be 5 years.

Later, when I came to Kelvin, he was also very interested in this question. After some thermodynamic calculations, the answer he gave was 800 million years, but at the same time he also gave a large error range, 2000 million to [-] million years. .

After arriving at the venue of the Royal Society, Rutherford was dumbfounded. He didn't expect that Kelvin, who was in his 80s, would sit in the first row of the venue and listen to his lecture.

At that time, Kelvin was the most respected person in the British physics and even scientific circles. His status as a canonized Lord made him the first scientist to enter the House of Lords of the British Parliament.

In comparison, Rutherford at the time was mediocre, and could only be regarded as one of Kelvin's reincarnated disciples.

He didn't dare to say in front of Kelvin that the age of the earth estimated by Kelvin was inaccurate because of the heat generated by radioactivity.

Rutherford didn't dare to mention the age of the earth in his speech until he saw Calvin close his eyes, thinking that he was too old and couldn't hold on to sleep.

Who knew that Kelvin wasn't asleep at all, he was just closing his eyes and resting his mind.

He widened his eyes wide after hearing this statement, scaring Rutherford into a cold sweat.

Fortunately, Chen Muwu's teacher was clever enough, and immediately gave an explanation that was not tenable, but sounded very useful to others.

"But that doesn't mean Lord Kelvin's thesis is wrong.

"In that paper, Lord Kelvin also pointed out that the thermodynamic dating method in the paper is only correct if there is no new source of heat in the earth's interior.

"In other words, it was Lord Kelvin's holy candle that first predicted the existence of radioactivity!"

The old man smiled with satisfaction, and Rutherford also heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the smile.

Although the phenomenon of radioactivity was first discovered by the old enemy, the French, the British did not publicize that Kelvin was the first person to propose radioactivity because of Rutherford's words.

Rutherford was afraid of Kelvin, but old Thomson was not afraid of his master at all, on the contrary he was very grateful to him.

The Cavendish Laboratory was originally called the Devonshire Laboratory because the funder was William Cavendish, then Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and the seventh Duke of Devonshire.

During the establishment of the laboratory, the Duke of Devonshire approached William Thomson, who later became Lord Calvin, but he had not accepted the canonization at this time, so he could not be called by the title.

Thomson was not interested in being the director of the laboratory, so the Duke of Devonshire went to the most famous German physicist, Helmholtz, who was also not interested in the position of director.

In this way, the first director of the laboratory was the turn of Maxwell, who was not very famous at the time. When he was studying the manuscript, he discovered the greatness of Henry Cavendish.

In order to commemorate the buried physicist and his relatives who were generous funders, it was at Maxwell's suggestion that the laboratory's title was changed from Devonshire to Cavendish.

After Maxwell's untimely death, Cambridge University approached Trinity College alumnus Rayleigh III, hoping that he would succeed him as the second director of the Cavendish Laboratory.

But at that time, Rayleigh III had another better choice, which was to be a professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institute.

A start-up grassroots team like the Cavendish Laboratory is definitely not as attractive as the Royal Research Institute with the royal name.

But someone from his alma mater came to ask him for help, and it was very difficult for Rayleigh III to refuse this request.

So he stepped in and signed a five-year agreement with Cambridge University, that is, he, a firefighter, would be the director of the Cavendish Laboratory for five years to help the laboratory get on the right track.

As soon as the time came, he would step down from this position and go to London to pursue a better development.

Five years later, Rayleigh III left Cambridge for London as promised, and the Cavendish Laboratory faced the issue of the director again.

However, before Rayleigh III left, he recommended his student to the review committee of Cambridge University. Thomson, who was 28 years old at the time, took over as the third director of Cavendish Laboratory.

The young old Thomson also followed the teacher's advice and wrote an application letter.

Competing with him at the time were Rayleigh III's two deputies in the laboratory, Osborne Reynolds and Richard Glazebrook.

Old Thomson was finally able to enter the Cavendish Laboratory, which was beyond everyone's expectations.

Only he himself knew that this matter was actually promoted by his teacher with the same surname as himself, the respected Lord Kelvin.

He told his student Rayleigh III that to give young people some opportunities, the young man Joseph under him looked very good.

Rayleigh III relayed Kelvin's words to the review committee of Cambridge University, and the young old Thomson could become the third director of the laboratory.

He took his two predecessors, Maxwell and Rayleigh III as his example, and under his leadership, Cavendish Laboratory also flourished.

Without Kelvin's insight, Old Thomson is just a lecturer at Trinity College. After gaining academic status at Cambridge University, he will probably return to his hometown Manchester to seek a professorship at Victoria University. job.

Without the Cavendish Laboratory, if there is no old Thomson, it will never reach its current position.

In the room I was in today, I heard him accidentally mentioning his master, Lord Kelvin, which made old Thomson go into a trance.

As Chen Muwu said, the development of physics cannot be separated from the inheritance of generations of physicists.

If he hadn't been recommended by his master Lord Calvin to his master Rayleigh III, he would not have served as the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, and since then he has become a fellow of the Royal Society, discovered electrons, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Elected President of the Royal Society and became Dean of his alma mater, Trinity College.

And if Rutherford hadn't recommended Chen Muwu to him, he wouldn't have come here from far away China, and he wouldn't have achieved so many achievements outside of physics and physics.

Old Thomson looked at Chen Muwu, who was talking to a machine model, his eyes were full of shadows of himself doing experiments with his teacher Rayleigh III in this laboratory when he was young.

Was this machine model also inspired by Lord Kelvin?

"Sir Thomson, long time no see."

After Chen Muwu finished speaking, he stood up from the chair behind the desk. Several students also stood up while turning their heads. Oppenheimer, who had a relationship with old Thomson, nodded to his old man.

"Chen, you said that this thing was inspired by the drip generator, so this is also an electrostatic machine?"

Old Thomson was not polite to him at all, but straight to the point, and asked Chen Muwu directly about the model in front of him.

"Sir, that's right, this is exactly a generator, and it's powered on now, please look at this fluttering note..."

What followed was a very detailed explanation of the principles, and Old Thomson listened very carefully.

"I see. Lord Kelvin's drip generator used water droplets to transport the charge from top to bottom into the bucket. Your new generator reverses the process and simultaneously transfers the charge carrier. Changed from water droplets to silk belts, let it transport charges from bottom to top. Your brain is really smart, and you can always think of such novel and useful ideas!

"Did Ernest ask you to design this machine?"

"Yes Sir, the teacher asked me to design a particle accelerator, and I plan to use this method to obtain a high electrostatic voltage to accelerate charged particles."

"In the Cavendish experiment?"

"No, it should be in another vacant lot in Cambridgeshire. After all, if the voltage is to be raised to 100 million volts, there is no space in this building, and it is very dangerous."

"How much? One million volts?"

"Yes, 100 million volts. I plan to make one for practice. If it succeeds, I will build a higher potential in the future."

This number still gave old Thomson a little shock. He knew that the drip generator designed by Lord Kelvin, due to the limitations of various factors, the potential difference generated by that machine was basically around several thousand volts.

If it is manufactured more precisely, the potential difference can be increased by another order of magnitude, but compared with 100 million volts, there are still two decimal points between the two.

Although the model in Chen Muwu's hands is successful, will it be successful after it is enlarged dozens of times?
Although old Thomson didn't know the answer to this question, he still hoped that Chen Muwu would succeed.

"Then do you have enough funds?"

If Chen Muwu couldn't understand the implication of this sentence, he would be a fool.

Old Thomson made it clear that he wanted to help him get some more money!

"Sir Rutherford allocated [-] pounds to me. Although I don't know if it's enough and whether I can successfully build a particle accelerator, I have to try to find out. And the Cavendish Laboratory has always been poor. , but haven’t we still achieved so much!”

The expression on Chen Muwu's face was very tragic.

"Listen to what you said just now, I think this particle accelerator is very important, and there must be no mistakes. Dr. Chen, how about I help you allocate an additional fund from the hospital?"

Becoming the dean is different. When Rutherford was still saving money and asking for alms, and wanted to break a penny in half, old Thomson was able to take money directly from Trinity College in a grandiose manner.

"By the way, Dr. Chen, has this machine of yours been named?"

Chen Muwu originally planned to call it Chen's Generator, but before he could speak, Old Thomson was already asking and answering himself.

"Since you said that you were inspired by Lord Kelvin and improved this machine from his water drop motor, if you didn't name it, I think it's better to call it the Kelvin-Chen motor!"

Old Thomson's tone seemed to be discussing with Chen Muwu, but in fact it was completely unacceptable for others to refuse.

He may have remembered Kelvin's kindness to him, and wanted to commemorate his master in this way.

But as a great physicist, Kelvin has no shortage of formulas, laws and various things named after him, including but not limited to the Kelvin expression of the second law of thermodynamics in thermodynamics, Kelvin temperature scale, Joule-Thomson effect, Thomson's law in electrostatics, Kelvin balance, Kelvin sphere... and so on.

Old Thomson's move was actually just to seek a kind of psychological comfort for himself.

Ordinary people are likely to be unhappy when their naming rights are robbed.

But for Chen Muwu, there was nothing unpleasant in his heart.

Because in the past and in the future, there will be many formulas and laws named after him.

This starter has one more motor and one less motor.

On the contrary, he was glad that old Thomson could give this machine such a name, so that he could associate himself with a great physicist.

But Chen Muwu didn't expect that the surprises brought to him by Old Thomson were more than that.

"Sir Thomson, it is true that this machine has no name, and I have no objection to the name you have chosen."

"That's good, that's good, Lord Kelvin has no children, so after he and his wife died, he left a large inheritance, many of which were donated to the Royal Society and established a 'Lord Kelvin Fund' .

"Dr. Chen, since this machine is called a Kelvin-Chen Qi motor, do you have time recently to visit the Royal Society with me? Maybe you can spend a fortune from this fund.

"With this money, plus Ernest's funding and Trinity College's funding, in this way, your work in Cambridge may be a lot easier."

(End of this chapter)