Abstract
BY request of the council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an address on “Molecular Energy in Gases” was delivered on May 3 by Principal Sir Alfred Ewing, who began by referring to a series of papers on the foundations of the kinetic theory which were communicated to the society thirty years ago by a great teacher and a great master of the subject, Prof. Tait. Since those days the kinetic theory had received what might be called ocular demonstration through Perrin's investigation of the Brownian movements, which exhibited the buffeting of visible bodies by the blows of the molecules. Much had come to be known regarding the probable structure of the atom. There had been substantial advances in the study of specific heats of gases and of their absorption and emission of heat in the form of infra-red rays. But the difficulty referred to by Tait of reconciling the known facts about specific heat with the theory of the equipartition of energy, as developed by Maxwell and Boltzmann, still remained, and had led to various applications or extensions of Planck's quantum theory, not only to the vibrations of gaseous molecules, but also to their rotations.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Molecular Energy in Gases. Nature 105, 472 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105472a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105472a0