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6 unusual facts about William Thomson


Beijing National Aquatics Center

The complex Weaire–Phelan pattern was developed by slicing through bubbles in soap foam, resulting in more irregular, organic patterns than foam bubble structures proposed earlier by the scientist Kelvin.

Gyrocompass

By 1880, William Thomson (lord Kelvin) tried to propose a gyrostat (tope) to the British Navy.

Kelvin High School

The school is named after the mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin.

Kelvin Island

Kelvin Island is named after the British scientist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824-1907).

Magnetoresistance

The effect was first discovered by William Thomson (better known as Lord Kelvin) in 1851, but he was unable to lower the electrical resistance of anything by more than 5%.

Theory of tides

This position changed in the 1860s when the local circumstances of tidal phenomena were more fully brought into account by William Thomson's application of Fourier analysis to the tidal motions.


Nikola Tesla Museum

A series of selected letters, placed on both sides of the photograph, witnesses the highest acknowledgements expressed to Tesla by the greatest scientists of his time: Albert Einstein, William Crookes, Lord Kelvin, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Robert A. Millikan, Lee de Forest, Edwin H. Armstrong, Arthur H. Compton, Arthur E. Kennelly, Popov and Pupin.

William Atcheson Traill

This operated the world's first electrical railway, and was funded by capital raised from friends and investors including Sir Walter Siemens and Lord Kelvin.


see also

John Nichol

John Pringle Nichol (1804-1859), Scottish scientist; mentor to William Thomson

Kelvin Hughes

William Thomson was appointed a director of the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1856 and in 1858 was 'electrician' on HMS Agamemnon that laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable.

Thermodynamic temperature

1859: William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) proposed a thermodynamic temperature scale similar to William Thomson's but which used the degree Fahrenheit for its unit increment.