How did james joule die

You are reading in James Joule: from establishment irritant to honoured scientist. James Prescott Joule —89 is now rightly revered as one of the greatest scientists in the history of physics, due to his groundbreaking work in thermodynamics. However, this was not always the case—in his younger years, Joule struggled to be taken seriously by the scientific establishment.

James prescott joule pronunciation

Born in Salford in , James Prescott Joule was the son of a renowned local brewer and grew up fascinated by all things scientific. He became particularly interested in electricity and was fortunate enough to be tutored by John Dalton, one of the leading chemists of the day and a pioneer of atomic theory. This expert tutelage, combined with Joule's personal obsession and some brewing know-how as well as access to some specialised beer-making equipment would ultimately lead to one of the most ground-breaking and at the time, controversial discoveries in the history of science: that heat is a form of energy.

In Joule followed in his father ' s footsteps and became the manager of the family brewery; however, his fascination with and passion for science and experimentation continued in parallel with his day job.

James prescott joule contribution

He continued carr y ing out experiments at home with the intention of finding out if it would be more efficient to power the brewery using an electric battery than the steam power that was traditionally used. In he discovered what became known as Joule ' s First Law. This defined the relationship between the amount of heat produced and the current flowing through a conductor.

At this time, things seemed to be going well for Joule; he was still an amateur scientist but had been accepted as a member of the London Electrical Society. However, following the acceptance of Joule's First Law, he decided to look into the wider question of how much work can be extracted from a given source and soon found that the scientific establishment was strongly opposed to his ideas.

Joule's experiments showed that heat could be generated by an electric current; however, this went against the prevailing theory of the time, known as the caloric theory. In Joule presented his results to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Cambridge, but contemporary anecdotes claim that he was met by a stony silence.

Undeterred, he continued his experiments. In , believing he had compelling evidence, he submitted his paper to the most prestigious scientific group of all, the Royal Society… who refused to publish his work. The accepted theory of the time, caloric theory, considered heat to be a material—a type of fluid that flowed from warmer to cooler bodies—while Joule's ideas posited that heat was a form of molecular motion and that it would continue without dying out.