OVERVIEW

The emphasis of thermodynamics on accounting for how energy could be captured to produce work, and questions of how to limit the inevitable waste in the process is one that captivated the nineteenth century in a multiplicity of ways: whether seeing a waterfall not as a pleasing aesthetic natural phenomenon but as a waste of energy -- that if dammed up could produce useful results by generating power, or with humans who were blind not being able to read and thus make full use of their brains and being productive in society. The exploration of thermodynamics also produced a renewed emphasis on the nature of elements and of chemical processes, and resulted in a number of spectacular achievements, of which the most impressive was perhaps the laying of a submarine cable system in the Atlantic Ocean capable of conveying telegraphic signals that cut the time to convey a message from ten days (how long a ship journey would take) to a matter of minutes. The solidity of the tangible physical world that existed at human scale, however, would not be the last word in scientific investigation, for as the nineteenth century came to a close, it was the subatomic world that would take center stage: notably, in the discovery of a class of elements that appeared to give off continuous energy, thus violating the laws of thermodynamics -- the phenomenon of radioactivity.

Reading Assignments:

Ede & Cormack, History of Science in Society, chapters 9 and 10, pp. 275-326 [note: this is the schedule for portioning out the reading on a roughly equivalent basis -- these chapters are related to topics forthe next unit)

Watch this video and read this website

- "'Lord Cable': telegraphy, empire, and the making of Lord Kelvin," Royal Society (45 min)
- Phil Edwards, "A map of all the underwater cables that connect the Internet," Vox, with 3 min video (Nov 2015)

Read this website and watch this video:

- "Models of the Atom" / Annenberg Videos (2:30 min)
- Extra History Quantum Computing, "Extra History #3: "The Einstein-Bohr Debates" (September 2018)

Read these websites:

- Carolyn Burdett, "Post-Darwin: social Darwinism, degeneration, eugenics"/ British Library (May 2014)
- "Louis Braille and the Braille Alphabet" / Paths to Literacy / 2015

Assignments:

Here are the Instructions for Essay #2, which is due in Week 10 on 3.31.

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