It is difficult to tell whether Chen Muwu suddenly said some words of praise to the ancients when he was explaining the principle of electric motors. Whether it was an accidental whim, or whether he did it deliberately after seeing old Thomson quietly entering the door.
However, the physicist he wanted to mention most in these words was not Newton, Maxwell, or Cavendish, but Lord Kelvin at the very beginning.
If these famous British physicists are calculated based on the traditional Chinese master-student relationship, then Rutherford is Chen Muwu's master, and Rutherford's master, Thomson, is Chen Muwu's master.
Old Thomson's master was Lord Rayleigh III, and Lord Rayleigh III's master was Kelvin.
If we substitute it into the sentence "Once a teacher, always a father", then Rutherford is Chen Muwu's father, Old Thomson is his grandfather, Rayleigh III is his great-grandfather, and Kelvin is his great-great-grandfather.
Chen Muwu mainly traveled a little later. By the time he came to this world in 1922, Rayleigh III had already been dead for three years, let alone Kelvin, who had died fifteen years ago.
Therefore, in his lineage, Chen Muwu had only met his master, Old Thomson.
Rutherford was a little luckier. Not only did he meet his master, Rayleigh III, but he also had a few encounters with Kelvin.
Rutherford left New Zealand and came to the United Kingdom in 1895. He studied at Cambridge University for two years. Then in 1898, he was recommended by Thomson Sr. to McGill University in Canada. He did not return to the United Kingdom until 1909.
Although Kelvin lived until 1907, the two met only rarely and rarely.
In 1904, Rutherford, who was on a business trip from Canada to England, was invited to give a lecture on radioactivity to the Royal Society.
In his speech, Rutherford planned to talk about how radioactivity produces huge amounts of energy. The temperature inside the earth is very high precisely because radioactive reactions are continuously going on inside, thus obtaining energy.
The reason why he mentioned this matter in the lecture on radioactivity is that the age of the earth has always been a hot topic in academic circles.
Ever since Newton, people have always wanted to know how old the earth is.
The method given by Newton 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 required for this cooling process.
Finally, the data of the earth was substituted into the iron ball and the lifespan of the earth was calculated to be 50,000 years.
Later, when he came to Kelvin, he was also very interested in this problem. After some thermodynamic calculations, he gave the answer of 98 million years, but also gave a large error range, from 20 million to 40 million years. Billions of years.
After arriving at the venue of the Royal Society, Rutherford was dumbfounded. He did not expect that Kelvin, who was in his eighties, would sit directly in the first row of the venue to listen to his lecture.
At that time, Kelvin was the most respected person in British physics and even science. 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 that time was mediocre and could only be regarded as one of Kelvin's disciples.
He simply did not dare to say in front of Kelvin that because radioactivity produces heat, Kelvin's previous estimate of the age of the earth was inaccurate.
It wasn't until he saw Calvin closing his eyes, thinking that he was too old to hold on and fell asleep, that Rutherford dared to mention the age of the earth in his speech.
Who knew that Kelvin was not asleep at all, but just closing his eyes to relax.
His eyes widened when he heard this statement, which scared Rutherford into a cold sweat.
Fortunately, Chen Muwu's teacher was smart enough and immediately gave an explanation that was not very tenable, but sounded very useful to others.
"But this does not mean that Lord Kelvin's thesis is wrong.
"In that paper, Lord Kelvin also pointed out that the thermodynamic dating method in the paper was correct only if there were no new sources of heat inside the Earth.
"In other words, it was Lord Kelvin who first predicted the existence of radioactive phenomena!"
The old man smiled with satisfaction, and Rutherford breathed 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 just 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 its sponsor was William Cavendish, the seventh Duke of Devonshire and the then President of the University of Cambridge.
When the laboratory was founded, the Duke of Devonshire approached William Thomson, later 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 this laboratory, so the Duke of Devonshire went to Helmholtz, Germany's most famous physicist, who also had no interest in the position of director.
In this way, the first director of the laboratory was 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 generous funder relatives, it was at Maxwell's suggestion that the name of the laboratory was changed from Devonshire to Cavendish.
After Maxwell's untimely death, Cambridge University approached Rayleigh III, an alumnus of Trinity College, hoping that he could succeed him as the second director of the Cavendish Laboratory.
But at that time, Rayleigh III had another better choice, which was to become professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution.
A start-up grassroots team like the Cavendish Laboratory is certainly not as attractive as a Royal Institute with a royal name.
But someone from his alma mater came to ask him for help, and it was difficult for Rayleigh III to refuse the request.
So he was appointed at the critical moment and made a five-year agreement with the University of Cambridge, that is, he, a firefighter, would be the director of the Cavendish Laboratory for five years and help the laboratory get on the right track.
When the time comes, he will 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 once again faced the problem of choosing a director.
However, before Rayleigh III left, he recommended his student, 28-year-old Thomson Sr., to the Cambridge University Review Committee to succeed him as the third director of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The young old Thomson also ignorantly followed the teacher's suggestion and wrote an application letter.
Competing with him at that time were two of Rayleigh III's deputies in the laboratory, Osborne Reynolds and Richard Glazebrook.
Thomson Sr. was finally able to take over the Cavendish Laboratory, which exceeded everyone's expectations.
Only he himself knew that this matter was actually driven by his senior master with the same surname as himself, the highly respected Lord Kelvin.
He told his student Rayleigh III that young people should be given some opportunities, and the young man under his command, Joseph, looked very good.
Rayleigh III relayed Kelvin's words to the Cambridge University review committee, and the young old Thomson became the third director of the laboratory.
He used his two predecessors, Maxwell and Rayleigh III, as his role models. Under his leadership, the Cavendish Laboratory also prospered.
Without Kelvin's discerning eye, old Thomson would have been just a lecturer at Trinity College. After working his way up to an academic position at Cambridge University, he would probably return to his hometown of Manchester and seek a professorship at the University of Victoria. job.
Without Cavendish Laboratory, without Old Thomson, it would never have reached its current status.
In the room I was in today, I heard him accidentally mention his master, Lord Kelvin, which made old Thomson's mind fall into a trance.
As Chen Muwu said, the development of physics is inseparable from the inheritance of generations of physicists.
If Lord Calvin, his master, had not recommended it to his master, Rayleigh III, he would not have been the director of the Cavendish Laboratory. From then on, he would have risen rapidly, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society, discovering the electron, and winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was elected president of the Royal Society and became dean of his alma mater, Trinity College.
And if Rutherford had not recommended Chen Muwu to him, he would not have come here from distant China, nor would he have achieved so many achievements in physics and outside of physics.
Old Thomson looked at Chen Muwu, who was talking to a machine model. His eyes were full of the shadow of himself doing experiments with his teacher Rayleigh III in this laboratory when he was young.
Is this machine model also inspired by Lord Kelvin?
"Sir Thomson, long time no see."
After finishing speaking, Chen Muwu stood up from the chair behind his desk. Several students also stood up and turned back. Oppenheimer, who had a relationship with the old Thomson, also nodded to the old man.
"Chen, you said this thing was inspired by the dripping electrostatic machine, so is it also an electrostatic machine?"
Old Thomson was not polite to him at all, but went straight to the point and asked Chen Muwu directly about the model in front of him.
"Sir, yes, this is exactly a kind of electrifying machine, and it is now charged. Please look at this note that is flying now..."
What followed was a very detailed explanation of the principles, and Old Thomson listened very carefully.
"I understand. Lord Kelvin's dripping generator relies on water droplets to transport charges from top to bottom into the bucket. But your new generator reverses this process and also transfers the charge carrier to the bucket. Instead of water droplets, it is replaced by a silk ribbon, allowing it to transport charges from bottom to top. Your brain is really smart, and it can always come up with such novel and useful ideas!
"Did Ernest also ask you to design this machine?"
"Yes Sir, the teacher asked me to design a particle accelerator. I plan to use this method to obtain an electrostatic high voltage to accelerate charged particles."
"In the Cavendish experiment?"
"No, it should be on another vacant lot in Cambridgeshire. After all, the voltage needs to be increased to one million volts. There is no space in this building and it is also very dangerous."
"How much? One million volts?"
"Yes, one million volts. I plan to make one first for practice. If it succeeds, I will build another one with a higher potential in the future."
This number still gave Old Thomson a slight shock. He knew that the dripping generator designed by Lord Kelvin had a potential difference of several thousand volts due to limitations of various factors.
If it is made more precisely, the potential difference can be increased by another order of magnitude, but compared with one million volts, the difference between the two is still two decimal points.
Although the model in Chen Muwu's hand was successful, will it still 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 could succeed.
"Do you have enough funds?"
If Chen Muwu couldn't hear the implication of this sentence, he would really be a fool.
Old Thomson clearly wants to help him get more money!
"Sir Rutherford gave me twenty-five hundred pounds. Although I don't know if it is enough to successfully build a particle accelerator, I have to try to find out. And the Cavendish Laboratory has always been very poor. , but haven’t we still achieved so many achievements!”
The expression on Chen Muwu's face was very tragic.
"Listening to what you just said, I think this particle accelerator is very important and must not make mistakes. Dr. Chen, how about I help you allocate an additional amount of funds from the hospital?"
It was different when he became the dean. While Rutherford was still saving money and trying to spend money by breaking a penny in half, old Thomson could openly take money directly from Trinity College.
"By the way, Dr. Chen, have you given this machine a name?"
Chen Muwu originally planned to call it Chen's Electric Motor, but before he could say anything, Old Thomson was already asking questions for himself opposite.
"Since you said that you were inspired by Lord Kelvin and improved this machine from his water drop generator, if you don't have a name, I think it's better to call it the Kelvin-Chen Qi generator!"
Old Thomson's tone seemed to be that he was discussing with Chen Muwu, but in fact, he could not tolerate rejection at all.
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 Kelvin's expression of the second law of thermodynamics in thermodynamics, the Kelvin temperature scale, and the Joule-Thomson Effect, Thomson's law in electrostatics, as well as Kelvin equilibrium, Kelvin sphere...and so on.
Old Thomson's move was actually just to seek psychological comfort for himself.
Ordinary people would probably be unhappy if they were robbed of naming rights.
But for Chen Muwu, there was nothing unhappy in his heart.
Because there will be many formulas and laws named after him in the past and in the future.
One more motor in this generator is not too much, and one less is not enough.
On the contrary, he was very happy that the old Thomson could give such a name to this machine and associate himself with a great physicist.
But Chen Muwu didn't expect that Old Thomson would bring him more surprises than that.
"Sir Thomson, this machine does not have a name yet. I have no objection to the name you have chosen."
"That's good, that's good. Lord Kelvin had no children behind him, so after he and his wife both died, he left a large inheritance, much of which was donated to the Royal Society and a 'Lord Kelvin Fund' was established. .
"Dr. Chen, since this machine is called the Kelvin-Chen Qi Electric Machine, do you have time to go to the Royal Society with me recently? Maybe we can make a payment from this fund.
"With this money, plus Ernest's funding and Trinity College's allocation, your work in Cambridge may become much easier."
(End of chapter)
