“Scientific Jokes”

Abstract

I DO not know who your correspondent “G. H.” may be, but I should surmise from the tone of his letter that he is somewhat of a beginner in science, and that he is so proud of his acquaintance with certain elementary propositions in thermodynamics, that he is on the qui vive to detect in others an ignorance of them. In my opinion the fair meaning of the passage objected to, when read with its context, is that the author is drawing a parallel between temperature in heat and potential in electricity (between which there are striking analogies), and that the words to which your correspondent refers are purposely employed to prevent any one imagining (as “G. H.” seems to have done) that it was intended to represent the energy of heat as the product of heat and temperature in the same manner as that of electricity is the product of quantity and potential. Temperature is treated as inseparable from heat and nothing more, just as potential is inseparable from electricity, and this is not an unscientific view of the matter.