A Treatise on Electrical Theory and the Problem of the Universe; Considered from the Physical Point of View, with Mathematical Appendices (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...the difficulty of the unduly high specific heat, since the jump of the electron from one atom to the next would occupy so little time that the electrons would not remain free long enough to attain the temperature of the metal, and it would, therefore, never be necessary to consider the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a large collection of them. The theory is worked out on the assumption that a metallic conductor contains a large number of such doublet molecules capable of moving freely through its substance, and which may therefore be assumed to distribute themselves in accordance with Maxwell's law.1 It is shown to account for the phenomena of metallic conduction, but these hypotheses are of an extremely artificial character, and the theory based upon them is only propounded by Sir J. J. Thomson as a possible alternative to the earlier one,2 in consequence of the supposed breakdown of the latter. As Jeans' correction of the formula in question entirely obviates the difficulty which led to the formulation of this alternative theory, I shall not consider the latter in detail, but proceed to show how the phenomena of metallic conduction may be accounted for on the far simpler and more satisfactory theory which assumes only the presence of free negative electrons distributed in accordance with Maxwell's law, at a temperature determined by their own kinetic energy. We shall see presently that this temperature is what is called the temperature of the matter forming the substance of the conductor. The free electrons will collide with each other and with the atoms of the metallic conductor, and when a steady state is attained, the mean kinetic energy of the electrons, which determines the temperature, will be independent of the pressure, and ...