Abstract
I HAVE little doubt that Prof. Osborne Reynolds is much more competent than I am to say what is or is not consistent with the kinetic theory of gases, but I hardly think that he gives evidence of this in his letter to last week's NATURE (p. 27). Unless my ignorance of the matter is more complete than I am aware of, the law that the rate of communication of heat to a gas is independent of the density, applies only when the space occupied by the gas is so great, or the variations of density so small, that these variations do not alter the temperatures of those portions of the gas which are at each instant respectively receiving and giving out heat. This condition cannot, I imagine, be fulfilled in the radiometer, where it seems to me inevitable that an action of the kind to which Mr. Johnstone Stoney called attention must take place.
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FOSTER, G. The Radiometer and its Lessons. Nature 17, 43 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/017043c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017043c0
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