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Optical Timeline by Tony Oursler
Optical Timeline by Tony Oursler 1 Iris is thought to be derived from the RED Symyaz leads the fallen angels. Archimedes (c. 287212 b.c.) is said to Greek word for speaker or messenger. According to Enoch, they came to earth have used a large magnifying lens or Seth, the Egyptian god most associated of their own free will at Mount Hermon, burning-glass, which focused the suns Fifth century b.c. Chinese philosopher with evil, is depicted in many guises: descending like stars. This description rays, to set fire to Roman ships off Mo Ti, in the first description of the gives rise to the name Lucifer, “giver of Syracuse. camera obscura, refers to the pinhole as a black pig, a tall, double-headed figure light.” “collection place” and “locked treasure with a snout, and a serpent. Sometimes And now there is no longer any “I have seen Satan fall like lightning room.” he is black, a positive color for the difficulty in understanding the images in from heaven.” (Luke 10:1820) Egyptians, symbolic of the deep tones of mirrors and in all smooth and bright Platos Cave depicts the dilemma of fertile river deposits; at other times he is surfaces. The fires from within and from the uneducated in a graphic tableau of red, a negative color reflected by the without communicate about the smooth light and shadow. The shackled masses parched sands that encroach upon the surface, and from one image which is are kept in shadow, unable to move crops. Jeffrey Burton Russell suggests variously refracted. -
Mister Mary Somerville: Husband and Secretary
Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Mister Mary Somerville: Husband and Secretary Journal Item How to cite: Stenhouse, Brigitte (2020). Mister Mary Somerville: Husband and Secretary. The Mathematical Intelligencer (Early Access). For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2020 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1007/s00283-020-09998-6 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Mister Mary Somerville: Husband and Secretary BRIGITTE STENHOUSE ary Somerville’s life as a mathematician and mathematician). Although no scientific learned society had a savant in nineteenth-century Great Britain was formal statute barring women during Somerville’s lifetime, MM heavily influenced by her gender; as a woman, there was nonetheless a great reluctance even toallow women her access to the ideas and resources developed and into the buildings, never mind to endow them with the rights circulated in universities and scientific societies was highly of members. Except for the visit of the prolific author Margaret restricted. However, her engagement with learned institu- Cavendish in 1667, the Royal Society of London did not invite tions was by no means nonexistent, and although she was women into their hallowed halls until 1876, with the com- 90 before being elected a full member of any society mencement of their second conversazione [15, 163], which (Societa` Geografica Italiana, 1870), Somerville (Figure 1) women were permitted to attend.1 As late as 1886, on the nevertheless benefited from the resources and social nomination of Isis Pogson as a fellow, the Council of the Royal networks cultivated by such institutions from as early as Astronomical Society chose to interpret their constitution as 1812. -
Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, and the Changing Romantic
Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2010-11-29 Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, and the Changing Romantic Marianne Lind Baker Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Baker, Marianne Lind, "Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, and the Changing Romantic" (2010). Theses and Dissertations. 2647. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2647 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Title Page Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, and the Changing ―Romantic I‖ Marianne Lind Baker A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Nicholas Mason, Chair Leslee Thorne-Murphy Paul Westover Department of English Brigham Young University December 2010 Copyright © 2010 Marianne Baker All Rights Reserved Abstract ABSTRACT Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, and the Changing ―Romantic I‖ Marianne Lind Baker Department of English Master of Arts In the mid to late 1700s, men of letters became more and more interested in the natural world. From studies in astronomy to biology, chemistry, and medicine, these ―philosophers‖ pioneered what would become our current scientific categories. While the significance of their contributions to these fields has been widely appreciated historically, the interconnection between these men and their literary counterparts has not. A study of the ―Romantic man of science‖ reveals how much that figure has in common with the traditional ―Romantic‖ literary figure embodied by poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. -
Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor Emeritus
Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor emeritus Ph.D., German Literature, Princeton University Career Highlights Research Focus: Eighteenth-century literature; German literature and science; the literature which popularized science, with particular emphasis on the eighteenth century Education 1965-1968 PhD, German Literature, Princeton University 1964-1965 German Literature, University of Cologne 1949-1954 University of Cologne; Staatsexamen in mathematics and physics Employment 1996- Professor emeritus, Dept. of Germanic Languages, U of Texas at Austin 1984-1996 Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1973-1984 Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1968-1973 Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin Awards Spring 1989 University of Texas Faculty Research Assignment Fall 1988 University of Texas Presidential Leave Publications: Books (Edited with Leonard Schulze) Literature and History. Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1983 Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Physik im WIrkungsfeld der deutschen Romantik. Quellen und Forschungen, N.F., 59. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973. (Edited with and introduction) Myth and Reason. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973 Publications: Articles "Physics for the Ladies: Early Literary Voices and Strategies For and Against the Popularization of Copernicus and Newton." In: Themes and Structures: Studies in German Literature from Goethe to the Present. Ed. Alexander Stephan. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997: 21-38 "Newton for the Ladies: Algarotti's Popularization of Newton's Optics." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 304. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1992: 1152-55 "Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Romantic Physics in Germany." Romanticism and the Sciences, ed. A Cunningham and N. Jardino. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. -
Alessandro Volta and the Discovery of the Battery
1 Primary Source 12.2 VOLTA AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE BATTERY1 Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) was born in the Duchy of Milan in a town called Como. He was raised as a Catholic and remained so throughout his life. Volta became a professor of physics in Como, and soon took a significant interest in electricity. First, he began to work with the chemistry of gases, during which he discovered methane gas. He then studied electrical capacitance, as well as derived new ways of studying both electrical potential and charge. Most famously, Volta discovered what he termed a Voltaic pile, which was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide electrical current to a circuit. Needless to say, Volta’s discovery had a major impact in science and technology. In light of his contribution to the study of electrical capacitance and discovery of the battery, the electrical potential difference, voltage, and the unit of electric potential, the volt, were named in honor of him. The following passage is excerpted from an essay, written in French, “On the Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds,” which Volta sent in 1800 to the President of the Royal Society in London, Joseph Banks, in hope of its publication. The essay, described how to construct a battery, a source of steady electrical current, which paved the way toward the “electric age.” At this time, Volta was working as a professor at the University of Pavia. For the excerpt online, click here. The chief of these results, and which comprehends nearly all the others, is the construction of an apparatus which resembles in its effects viz. -
Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and His Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter
Andreas Kleinert Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and his Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter A characteristic of German science around 1800 is the violent debate about concepts and methods between the supporters and opponents of a certain philosophy of nature that is generally designed by the German term of Naturphilosophie.1 In the early nineteenth century, physicists who were arguing in the spirit of Naturphilosophie were defined as a community of people that could be sharply distinguished from the “normal” or traditional physicists. This was especially the standpoint of observers from outside Germany.2 But also German physicists spoke of “so-called philosophers of nature who declared that dualism is the principle of order everywhere in physics and chemistry”.3 The philosopher Friedrich Wilhem Schelling, who had given the term of “spekulative Physik”4 to the kind of science by which he wanted to overcome traditional experimental physics and chemistry, is often considered as the ideological forerunner of this group of scientists. Another way of dividing German physicists into different camps was the distinction between “Atomisten” and “Dynamisten”, atomists believing in the existence of matter, including imponderable matter, and dynamists believing only in 1 For more details, see the article of von Engelhardt in this volume. With regard to physics, see CANEVA (1997). 2 See OERSTED (1813). On p. XIV, the translator apologises for translating such an eccentric essay into French and mentions that Naturphilosophie was widely considered as having a detrimental influence on empirical sciences. (“Depuis peu on a fait aux Allemands le reproche très-grave de vouloir porter dans les sciences les spéculations, et pour ainsi dire les rêves d’une imagination exaltée. -
Battery Technologies for Small Scale Embeded Generation
Battery Technologies for Small Scale Embedded Generation. by Norman Jackson, South African Energy Storage Association (SAESA) Content Provider – Wikipedia et al Small Scale Embedded Generation - SSEG • SSEG is very much a local South African term for Distributed Generation under 10 Mega Watt. Internationally they refer to: Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG) or district/decentralized energy It is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid- connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER) Types of Energy storage: • Fossil fuel storage • Thermal • Electrochemical • Mechanical • Brick storage heater • Compressed air energy storage • Cryogenic energy storage (Battery Energy • Fireless locomotive • Liquid nitrogen engine Storage System, • Flywheel energy storage • Eutectic system BESS) • Gravitational potential energy • Ice storage air conditioning • Hydraulic accumulator • Molten salt storage • Flow battery • Pumped-storage • Phase-change material • Rechargeable hydroelectricity • Seasonal thermal energy battery • Electrical, electromagnetic storage • Capacitor • Solar pond • UltraBattery • Supercapacitor • Steam accumulator • Superconducting magnetic • Thermal energy energy storage (SMES, also storage (general) superconducting storage coil) • Chemical • Biological • Biofuels • Glycogen • Hydrated salts • Starch • Hydrogen storage • Hydrogen peroxide • Power to gas • Vanadium pentoxide History of the battery This was a stack of copper and zinc Italian plates, -
Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century and German Aesthetics
10 Goethe’s Exploratory Idealism Mattias Pirholt “One has to always experiment with ideas.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg “Everything that exists is an analogue to all existing things.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe Johann Wolfgang Goethe made his famous Italian journey in the late 1780s, approaching his forties, and it was nothing short of life-c hanging. Soon after his arrival in Rome on November 1, 1786, he writes to his mother that he would return “as a new man”1; in the retroactive account of the journey in Italienische Reise, he famously describes his entrance into Rome “as my second natal day, a true rebirth.”2 Latter- day crit- ics essentially confirm Goethe’s reflections, describing the journey and its outcome as “Goethe’s aesthetic catharsis” (Dieter Borchmeyer), “the artist’s self-d iscovery” (Theo Buck), and a “Renaissance of Goethe’s po- etic genius” (Jane Brown).3 Following a decade of frustrating unproduc- tivity, the Italian sojourn unleashed previously unseen creative powers which would deeply affect Goethe’s life and work over the decades to come. Borchmeyer argues that Goethe’s “new existence in Weimar bore an essentially different signature than his pre- Italian one.”4 With this, Borchmeyer refers to a particular brand of neoclassicism known as Wei- mar classicism, Weimarer Klassik, which is less an epochal term, seeing as it covers only a little more than a decade, than a reference to what Gerhard Schulz and Sabine Doering matter-o f- factly call “an episode in the creative history of a group of German writers around 1800.”5 Equally important as the aesthetic reorientation, however, was Goethe’s new- found interest in science, which was also a direct conse- quence of his encounter with the Italian nature. -
Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core Microscopy Pioneers Pioneers in Optics: Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W. Davidson . IP address: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 [email protected] 170.106.35.234 Johann Wilhelm Ritter beyond the violet. Ritter initially referred to the new type of , on (1776–1810) radiation as chemical rays, but the title of ultraviolet radiation 30 Sep 2021 at 19:10:55 Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a somewhat controversial eventually became the preferred term. scientist best known for his discovery of ultraviolet radiation. Despite his significant scientific achievements and his He was born on December 16, 1776, in Samitz, Germany, an acceptance into the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ritter area that is now part of Poland. Apprenticed to an apothecary was not well received by his contemporaries. His writing in Leignitz at the age of fourteen, Ritter developed an acute was considered oblique and confusing, and he often delayed interest in chemistry that carried over into other scientific explaining his experiments in detail. Some believed Ritter , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at fields. When he inherited a sum of made claims that he could not support and deemed him an money five years later, he was able unreliable source of information. His interest and studies of to leave his position and decided occult phenomena further damaged his reputation as a serious to enroll at the University of Jena. scientist. Jaded by his lack of credit and plagued by financial There he studied medicine, staying difficulties, Ritter suffered a premature death at the age of on in a teaching position after thirty-three and did not receive proper recognition for his his graduation, until the duke of scientific exploits until more than a century later. -
Electrolysis of Water - Wikipedia 1 of 15
Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 1 of 15 Electrolysis of water Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen gas due to the passage of an electric current. This technique can be used to make hydrogen gas, a main component of hydrogen fuel, and breathable oxygen gas, or can mix the two into oxyhydrogen, which is also usable as fuel, though more volatile and dangerous. It is also called water splitting. It ideally requires a potential difference of 1.23 volts to split water. Simple setup for demonstration of Contents electrolysis of water at home History Principle Equations Thermodynamics Electrolyte selection Electrolyte for water electrolysis Pure water electrolysis Techniques Fundamental demonstration Hofmann voltameter Industrial High-pressure High-temperature An AA battery in a glass of tap water Alkaline water with salt showing hydrogen Polymer electrolyte membrane produced at the negative terminal Nickel/iron Nanogap electrochemical cells Applications Efficiency Industrial output Overpotential Thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 2 of 15 See also References External links History Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk used, in 1789, an electrostatic machine to make electricity which was discharged on gold electrodes in a Leyden jar with water.[1] In 1800 Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, and a few weeks later the English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used it for the electrolysis of water. In 1806 -
Voltaic Battery
Voltaic Battery ON THE CONNECTION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES Pgs. 290 – 297 BY MARY SOMERVILLE Voltaic electricity is of that peculiar kind which is elicited by the force of chemical action. It is connected with one of the most brilliant periods of British science, from the splendid discoveries to which it led Sir Humphry Davy; and it has acquired additional interest since the discovery of the reciprocal action of Voltaic and magnetic currents, which has proved that magnetism is only an effect of electricity, and that it has no existence as a distinct or separate principle. Consequently Voltaic electricity, as immediately connected with the theory of the earth and planets, forms a part of the physical account of their nature. In 1790, while Galvani, Professor of Anatomy in Bologna, was making experiments on electricity, he was surprised to see convulsive motions in the limbs of a dead frog accidentally lying near the machine during an electrical discharge. Though a similar action had been noticed long before his time, he was so much struck with this singular phenomenon, that he examined all the circumstances carefully, and at length found that convulsions take place when the nerve and muscle of a frog are connected by a metallic conductor. This excited the attention of all Europe; and it was not long before Professor Volta of Pavia showed that the mere contact of different bodies is sufficient to disturb electrical equilibrium, and that a current of electricity flows in one direction through a circuit of three conducting substances. From this he was led, by acute reasoning and experiment, to the construction of the Voltaic pile, which, in its early form, consisted of alternate discs of zinc and copper, separated by pieces of wet cloth, the extremities being connected by wires. -
H. C. Ørsted and the Discovery of Electromagnetism During a Lecture Given in the Spring of 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted De- Cided to Perform an Experiment
H. C. Ørsted and the Discovery of Electromagnetism During a lecture given in the spring of 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted de- cided to perform an experiment. As he described it years later, \The plan of the first experiment was, to make the current of a little galvanic trough apparatus, commonly used in his lectures, pass through a very thin platina wire, which was placed over a compass covered with glass. The preparations for the experiments were made, but some accident having hindered him from trying it before the lec- ture, he intended to defer it to another opportunity; yet during the lecture, the probability of its success appeared stronger, so that he made the first experiment in the presence of the audience. The mag- netical needle, though included in a box, was disturbed; but as the effect was very feeble, and must, before its law was discovered, seem very irregular, the experiment made no strong impression on the au- dience. It may appear strange, that the discoverer made no further experiments upon the subject during three months; he himself finds it difficult enough to conceive it; but the extreme feebleness and seeming confusion of the phenomena in the first experiment, the remembrance of the numerous errors committed upon this subject by earlier philoso- phers, and particularly by his friend Ritter, the claim such a matter has to be treated with earnest attention, may have determined him to delay his researches to a more convenient time. In the month of July 1820, he again resumed the experiment, making use of a much more considerable galvanical apparatus."1 The effect that Ørsted observed may have been \very feeble".