Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays

Tins volume contains twelve essays written at various times during recent years. Many of them are studies contributed to Scientific Reviews or delivered as popular lectures. Some are expositions of views the scientific basis of which may be regarded as established. Others--the...

Chapters

12. Chapter 12

From all this you see that Mars occupies a rather hot comer in the solar system. Is it not possible that more than once in the remote past Mars may have encountered one of these...

17. Chapter 17

This is a very important experiment as regards our present inquiry. Ice appears to possess more than one angle of friction according as a heavy or a light weight is used to pres...

15. Chapter 15

Haloes which are uniformly dark all over as described above are, in point of fact, "over-exposed"; to borrow a familiar photographic term. Haloes are found which show much beaut...

14. Chapter 14

ionisation constituting the latent image, where the ion is probably not immediately neutralised by chemical combination, presents features akin to the charging of a capacity--sa...

16. Chapter 16

possesses, however, a remarkable property which barium does not. Its atoms are not equally stable. In a given quantity of radium a certain very small percentage of the total num...

4. Chapter 4

the continents and which build up the mountains, differs on the average very considerably from that of the igneous rocks. We know the former have been derived from the latter, a...

11. Chapter 11

succession of undulations more or less symmetrical. As the orogenic force continues and develops, these undulations give place to folds, the limbs of which are approximately ver...

18. Chapter 18

In a word, the possibility of skating depends on the dynamical melting of ice under pressure. And observe the whole matter turns upon the apparently unrelated fact that the free...

3. Chapter 3

thing there is sometimes, along with very large amounts of thorium, an almost entire absence of lead in thorianites and thorites. And in some urano--thorites the lead may be not...

13. Chapter 13

In the first place the curves to which I have but briefly referred actually give rise in most cases to nodal, or crossing points; sometimes on the equator, sometimes off the equ...

2. Chapter 2

Now we are assured that all this sediment was transported by the rivers to the sea during geological time. Thus it follows that, if we can estimate the average annual rate of th...

7. Chapter 7

[1] Projecting upon the axes of time and energy any one complete vibration, as in Fig. 4, the total energy consumed by the organism during life is the length E on the axis of en...

5. Chapter 5

Now there is one effect produced by the solution of such salts as we have dealt with which is not produced by such bodies as sugar. The water is rendered a conductor of electric...

8. Chapter 8

With regard to using the passing opportunity the entire seasonal development of life is a manifestation of this attitude, and the fleetness, agility, etc., of higher organisms a...

6. Chapter 6

It is necessary to observe on the fundamental distinction between the growth of the protoplasm and the growth of the crystal. It is common to draw comparison between the two, an...

9. Chapter 9

radioactive heat continually given out by such rocks amounts to about one millionth part of 0.6 calories per second per cubic metre of average igneous rock. As we have to accoun...

1. Chapter 1

Tins volume contains twelve essays written at various times during recent years. Many of them are studies contributed to Scientific Reviews or delivered as popular lectures. Som...

19. Chapter 19

For as, by hypothesis, the aggregation occupies an infinite time in consummation it is nearly a certainty that each particle encountered after immeasurable time, and then for th...

10. Chapter 10

It is no more than a step to show that bound up with the radioactive energy are most of the earthquake and volcanic phenomena of the earth. The association of earthquakes with t...

20. Chapter 20

Radioactive layer, failure to account for deep-seated temperatures, 127; assumed thickness of, 128; temperature at base of, due to radioactivity, 129; in the upper crust of the...