Today, Stamatis brought up Count Rumford's experiment, which is often pointed out as empirical evidence that the caloric theory of heat (heat as a conserved sunstance-like quantity) was wrong. Rumford argued that you appear to be able to generate an infinite amount of heat by boring a hole in an object. Therefore heat cannot be a finite substance-like thing that is stored in objects. The competing theory was that heat is a kind of motion, which later was incorporated into thermodynamics.
Well, this reminded me of the classic UK yellow pages entry in the 90's: "Boring: see civil engineers":
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Civil-Engineers-No-Longer-Boring-Yellow-Pages-Says-So/id-fbef506d8ad666d913ccdd5588c7e698
This is funny. Also it makes me think of the image problem that physicists have, which is basically anyone new I meet, I have to be prepared for the possible, "You do physics? Ewww, I hated physics."
ReplyDeleteThis part cracked me up: "Even within the engineering community, the trade publication Tunnels and Tunneling is widely known as 'Bores and Boring.' "
My favorite response to "You do physics?":
ReplyDelete"Wow, you must be really smart."
Even if it's not actually true, I never get tired of this one :)