Dr Keith Walker @SteelFolk@qoto.org

English physicist and mathematician James Prescott Joule died #OTD in 1818.

Joule studied the nature of heat, & discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which in turn led to the development of the 1st law of thermodynamics. The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after him. He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale, which came to be called the Kelvin scale.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40706

#physics

The transistor is first demonstrated by three physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Laboratories #OTD in 1947.

They performed experiments and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, a signal was produced with the output power greater than the input. William Shockley saw the potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors. via @wikipedia

#science #physics

"Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do."

The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published OTD in 1815. Emma was submitted to the London publisher John Murray II. He offered Austen £450 for this plus the copyrights of Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, which she refused. Austen published two thousand copies of the novel at her own expense, retaining the copyright and paying a 10% commission to Murray.

Emma is available at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/158

#books #literature

Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using photography #OTD in 1891.

Brucia was also the first of over 200 asteroids discovered by Max Wolf, a pioneer in that method of finding astronomical objects. He discovered it when he was 28 years old, it was named in honour of Catherine Wolfe Bruce. The asteroid is a member of the Phocaea family (701).  It was an outer Mars-crossing asteroid with perihelion less than 1.666 AU until July 2017. via @wikipedia

#science #astronomy

Me, too!

Happy Solstice, everyone!

#TheRealReasonForTheSeason

This is in fact what he did.

Ok, well done…

"Philosophy is the continuous search for meaning - broader, clearer, negotiated, articulated."

Susanne K. Langer American philosopher and educator was born #OTD in 1895. She was one of the earliest American women to achieve an academic career in philosophy. Langer is best remembered for her 1942 book Philosophy in a New Key which was followed by a sequel Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art in 1953. via @wikipedia

Books by Susanne K. Langer at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/51344

#books #philosophy

Like all sensible people, I have strong feelings about the correct place for the comma in 'God rest ye merry, gentlemen'.

And every year at the old place I used to tweet about this important topic.

But now such exertions are redundant, by reason of this fine video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxfxy-3dGz0

(Btw, the correct place for the comma is after 'merry' - and if you disagree, you are wrong.)

Gods rest ye merry, followers.

Dorothy L. Sayers English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic died #OTD in 1957. She wrote numerous mystery stories featuring the witty and charming Lord Peter Wimsey combined the attractions of scholarly erudition and cultural small talk with the puzzle of detection. In her later years she turned from detective fiction to writing theological plays and books. She made scholarly translations of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio.

Dorothy L. Sayers at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/45867

#books

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin Irish engineer, mathematician, and physicist died #OTD in 1907.

Absolute temperatures are stated in units of kelvin in his honour. While the existence of a coldest possible temperature, known as absolute zero, was known prior to his work, Kelvin is known for determining its correct value as approximately −273.15 degrees Celsius. Kelvin's work in thermodynamics led to the idea that energy can not pass spontaneously from a colder object to a hotter object.

#physics

#Jasper
is an opaque variety of silica with a diverse range of colors and patterns. While most people associate it with red, the reality is much more diverse. Here's an overview of the different types and colors of jasper:
https://www.geologyin.com/2023/12/jasper-types-and-varieties-of-jasper.html?fbclid=IwAR1Vimh8LJl5aoBXaN9Ba2LTdrvlT9mCXXgnhXSEywrJXz5s4NXO4NuEQfE
By #GeologyWonders
#Geology #GeologyPage #Nature #minerals #crystals #gems #Nature #NatureLovers #NaturePhotography #Photographer

In August 1908, Hans Geiger published the first “gold foil” experiment which he conducted under Ernest Rutherford. There were many gold foil experiments, but this was the first. These experiments, also called the Geiger-Marsden experiments, were a driving factor behind the shift away from J. J. Thomson’s “plum pudding.” Then, in the gold foil experiments, alpha particles were shot at a very thin sheet of gold foil.

via Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics

#physics

The cherry on top of the shit sundae that is this climate denier president of the #cop28, is that his comment about "No science" backing up the need to phase out fossil fuels was while he spoke over (or mansplained) the actual guests in a talk called SHE CHANGES CLIMATE, a women-only panel about female perspectives on climate change.

He also topped it off by saying "I'm the man in charge".

The metaphor of ignorant toxic patriarchal capitalism would be too on the nose for fiction. But it's real