Science

NNadir

(33,556 posts) Sat Apr 28, 2018, 04:09 PM Apr 2018

I just stumbled into a very old paper by "Lord Rayleigh" contemplating water boiling in a pot.

John William Strutt, the 3rd Baron Rayleigh, commonly known as "Lord Rayleigh," was the winner of the 1904 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the gas Argon, which is now a very important gas with tremendous industrial application. (It is about 1% of air, by mass, but since it is non-reactive and colorless, no one before Rayleigh realized it was there. His discovery was actually incredible and relied on appreciation of very small differences in highly precise measurements of the density of nitrogen.)

"Lord Rayleigh" also discovered why the sky is blue, an effect to this day known as "Rayleigh scattering."

Recently I have been considering, in connection with understanding the physics of liquid plutonium, the physics of bubbles, a subject about which I know very little, when I came across a paper in one of my favorite journals. The paper is this one: New Modeling Strategies Evaluate Bubble Growth in Systems of Finite Extent: Energy and Environment Implications (Chatzis et al, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2018, 57 (16), pp 5680–5689)

While this paper was partially about a subject I rather despise but still study (since one must know the enemy), the chemistry and physics of dangerous fossil fuels, I was inspired to go to the references and encountered a paper from the early 20th century, one by Lord Rayleigh.

Lord Rayleigh, O. M. F. R. S., VIII. On the Pressure Developed in a Liquid During the Collapse of a Spherical Cavity. London Edinb. Dubl. Philos. Mag. 1917, 34, 94– 98, DOI: 10.1080/14786440808635681

I quote:

WHEN reading O. Reynolds's description of the sounds emitted by water in a kettle as it comes to the boil, and their explanation as duo to the partial or complete collapse of bubbles as they rise through cooler water, I proposed to myself a further consideration of the problem thus presented; but I had not gone far when I learned from Sir C. Parsons that he also was interested in the same question in connexion with cavitation behind screw-propellers, and that at his instigation Mr. S. Cook, on the basis of an investigation by Besant, had calculated the pressure developed when the collapse is suddenly arrested by impact against a rigid concentric obstacle. During the collapse the fluid is regarded as incompressible. In the present note I have given a simpler derivation of Besant's results, and have extended the calculation to find the pressure in the interior of the fluid during the collapse. It appears that before the cavity is closed these pressures may rise very high in the fluid near the inner boundary.

How beautiful is that?!!!

One of the world's greatest scientists stopping, at the height of his fame, to wonder about what happens to bubbles when water boils.

Of course that's probably very much connected with why he was a great scientist, because even bubbles and the sounds they made interested him.

This struck me as very wonderful, and I thought I'd write it down.

I hope you're having a pleasant weekend. This little find has made mine.

5 replies

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I just stumbled into a very old paper by "Lord Rayleigh" contemplating water boiling in a pot. (Original Post) NNadir Apr 2018 OP

His curiosity was so highly developed cyclonefence Apr 2018 #1

I think this almost childlike quality of wonder and questioning is universal with great scientists. Mayberry Machiavelli Apr 2018 #2

You may be familiar with this lecture, which given the year it took place, is amazing. NNadir Apr 2018 #4

To split hairs: William Ramsey received the Nobel in Chemistry for his discovery of the noble gases eppur_se_muova Apr 2018 #3

"There is often great pleasure in the contemplation of small matters." SCantiGOP Apr 2018 #5

cyclonefence

(4,483 posts)

1. His curiosity was so highly developed

Reply to NNadir (Original post)

Sat Apr 28, 2018, 04:23 PM

Apr 2018

that it didn't matter how insignificant its subject was. I think that disdain for disdain might be a mark of genius. Thanks very much for posting this.

Mayberry Machiavelli

(21,096 posts)

2. I think this almost childlike quality of wonder and questioning is universal with great scientists.

Reply to NNadir (Original post)

Sat Apr 28, 2018, 04:26 PM

Apr 2018

Reading Richard Feynman's autobiography it really comes through, even though he's a physicist the guy is curious about everything around him, whether it's how ants find sugar in his home, to wondering about the properties of spinning plates which led him on the track to his Nobel winning research when he was in a scientific "slump".

NNadir

(33,556 posts)

4. You may be familiar with this lecture, which given the year it took place, is amazing.

Reply to Mayberry Machiavelli (Reply #2)

Sun Apr 29, 2018, 10:01 AM

Apr 2018

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom.

I first encountered this lecture in a textbook, Fahlman's Materials Chemistry in the Appendix. But of course, it's on the internet.

I would like to describe a field, in which little has been done, but in which an enormous amount can be done in principle. This field is not quite the same as the others in that it will not tell us much of fundamental physics (in the sense of, ‘What are the strange particles?’) but it is more like solid-state physics in the sense that it might tell us much of great interest about the strange phenomena that occur in complex situations. Furthermore, a point that is most important is that it would have an enormous number of technical applications. What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale...

This lecture was in late 1959.

The irony is that I can and have carried Fahlman's book, and hundreds, if not thousands of other books and journal articles on a thumb drive that easily fits in my pocket, including thousands of papers on nanotechnology. I'm quite sure, in fact, that not two or three days go by on which I'm not involved with stuff on the micro, nano, or pico scale.

And this was in 1959...

This has to be one of the most remarkable historical examples of prescience ever demonstrated.

eppur_se_muova

(36,290 posts)

3. To split hairs: William Ramsey received the Nobel in Chemistry for his discovery of the noble gases

Reply to NNadir (Original post)

Sun Apr 29, 2018, 12:58 AM

Apr 2018

including argon, neon, krypton, and xenon; Rayleigh received the Nobel in Physics for ... um, the discovery of argon. I didn't know anything like that (two Nobel Prizes in different fields for collaborators on the same research) had ever happened. I guess things were different back then.

By a remakable coincidence, just a few days ago I read the following:

... When Lord Rayleigh described the discrepancy in specific gravities between nitrogen from ammonia and nitrogen from air, Ramsay was prepared to suggest an answer. " ... in my copy of Cavendish's life, published by the Cavendish Society in 1849, opposite his statement that on passing electric sparks through a mixture of nitrogen with excess of oxygen, he had obtained a small residue, amounting to not more than 1/125th of the whole, I find that I had written the words 'look into this.' It must have been the latent memory of this circumstance which led me, in 1894, to suggest to Lord Rayleigh a reason for the high density which he had found for atmospheric nitrogen." The result of his "looking into this" was the discovery of a new element, argon, which he soon followed with the discovery of neon, krypton, and xenon. He identified as {previously discovered} helium the gas developed from certain uranium minerals when they were treated with acids.

The great experimental skill developed in this research later permitted Ramsay (with R. Whytlaw-Gray) to separate and weigh tiny quantities of the {previously discovered} radioactive gas emitted by radium and to determine its atomic weight. His ideas about radioactive decomposition (Elements and Electrons, London, 1912) were not generally accepted at that time.

-- Eduard Farber, Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry: 1901-1961, Abelard-Schuman, London, 1963.

Certainly a reason to encourage the squirreling away of seemingly unimportant and disconnected facts in the hope they might turn out to be just the thing needed some day. If an observation saved for 45 years can pay off that big, I should start collecting windfalls any day now.

SCantiGOP

(13,873 posts)

5. "There is often great pleasure in the contemplation of small matters."

Reply to NNadir (Original post)

Sun Apr 29, 2018, 01:43 PM

Apr 2018

Can't remember who was responsible for this (paraphrased) quote. Might have been Oscar Wilde.

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