Abstract
IN the course of the discussion which took place in your columns during the winter of 1894–5 on tne kinetic theory of gases, emphasis was rightly laid on the difficulty of reconciling the law of partition of energy among the different degrees of freedom of molecules of gases with the large number of such degrees of freedom indicated by their spectra, and, generally, of explaining, on the kinetic theory, the relations between matter and the ether required to account for radiation. It was even suggested, by one writer, that the ether, with its vastly larger number of degrees of freedom, must ultimately absorb all the energy of the molecules. I instanced the case of a sphere moving in an infinite mass of perfect liquid as exemplifying a system where no ruch ultimate absorption of energy would take place, and pointed out that everything depended on the laws according to which transference of energy took place between the molecules and the ether.
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BRYAN, G. The Kinetic Theory and Radiant Energy. Nature 57, 536 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/057536b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/057536b0
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