Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

pines-demon · Monday, 12:09 PM

This anecdote is titled Farmyard Thermodynamics and it is about Walther Nernst (the one that formulated the Third law of thermodynamics):

In 1920, [Nerst] acquired Zibelle, an extensive estate in East Prussia. There were cows, pigs, a pond with carp, and a thousand acres of land, which included fields of cereals and other crops. Nernst pursued his new interest in farming with characteristic single-mindedness.

It is related that on a tour of inspection on a cold winter’s morning he entered the cowshed and was astonished to discover how warm it was. Why was it heated, he asked? The reply came that the heat was generated only by the cows, the result of metabolic activity. Nernst was dumbstruck and immediately resolved to sell his cows and invest instead in carp: a thinking man, he said, cultivates animals that are in thermodynamic equilibrium with their surroundings and does not waste his money in heating the universe. So the old system of ponds on the estate was stocked with carp, which did not noticeably heat the water of their pond.

Source: Gratzer, Walter. (2002). Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes, Oxford University Press.

I think this book will be very appreciated in this thread, I will try to find a copy...

difalcojr · Monday, 6:45 PM

A little off-track here, but this is a science forum too. I did not know that firedamp was another, older name for methane. Coal mines are definitely the most dangerous underground mines to work because of methane pockets.
However, the high deaths toll that the Wiki source shows below are outrageous! Compare "fewer than 100" deaths annually in U.S. mines to the number in China. China's production in tonnage is not 50 times greater than the U.S. It's about 7-8 times more today in my projection from this video below comparing countries' annual coal outputs which only goes to 2018.

And from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone according to the World Wildlife Fund.[10] Coal mining is the most dangerous occupation in China, the death rate for every 100 tons of coal mined is 100 times that of the death rate in the US and 30 times that achieved in South Africa. Moreover, 600,000 Chinese coal miners, as of 2004, were suffering from Coalworker's pneumoconiosis (known as "black lung") a disease of the lungs caused by long-continued inhalation of coal dust. And the figure increases by 70,000 miners every year in China.[11]

Historically, coal mining has been a very dangerous activity and the list of historical coal mining disasters is a long one. In the US alone, more than 100,000 coal miners were killed in accidents over the past century,[1] with more than 3,200 dying in 1907 alone.[2] In the decades following this peak, an annual death toll of 1,500 miner fatalities occurred every year in the US until approximately the 1970s.[12] Coal mining fatalities in the US between 1990 and 2012 have continued to decline, with fewer than 100 each year.[13]

If these numbers are still the same today, then China does not prioritize human safety well from this analysis.

difalcojr · Tuesday, 8:47 AM

Better get this ore car of a thread back on track to historical anecdotes.

The mining textbook original classic, De Re Metallica, by Georgius Agricola, from Germany, written in 1556, was first translated into English by a mining engineer who became President in the U.S. Herbert Hoover served for one term only, 1929-1933. He and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, both Stanford graduates, translated the Latin text in 1912. His lifetime was (1874-1964), so he was already ca. 37-38 when this was published. An engineer who became an unpopular president, as U.S. history shows it, but he and his wife's translation into English was very valuable too, as the history of science shows it.

Great book, lots of illustrations from original German woodcuts. Would make a great coloring book for kids. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Se...allica&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results

From the sleeve:
The book contains an unprecedented wealth of material on alluvial mining, alchemy, silver refining, smelting, surveying, timbering, nitric acid making, and hundreds of other phases of the medieval are of metallurgy.

Germans are known to be great miners, historically.

Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

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