Physics in the nineteenth century /
Purrington, Robert D.
New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press,
c1997.
Putting physics into the historical context of the Industrial Revolution and the European nation-state, Purrington traces the main figures, including Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, and Helmholtz, as well as their interactions, experiments, discoveries, and debates. The success of nineteenth-century physics laid the foundation for quantum theory and relativity in the twentieth.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-237) and index.
Putting physics into the historical context of the Industrial Revolution and the European nation-state, Purrington traces the main figures, including Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, and Helmholtz, as well as their interactions, experiments, discoveries, and debates. The success of nineteenth-century physics laid the foundation for quantum theory and relativity in the twentieth.
Prologue: the century of science -- Nineteenth-century science in context -- Electromagnetism -- Heat and thermodynamics -- Energy and the energy principle -- Atomism -- The kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics -- Fin de siècle.
Physics