Chapter 28 - The New Star of Science

The design of the Calais Battery and the related calculations weren't really particularly difficult, and Monge had actually given the job to Joseph more so that he could get a little more money out of it. But soon Monge realized that Joseph would get more than just a little money out of this job.

　　One day in July, Monge, who was on a business trip in Nice, suddenly received a letter from Joseph. It was a very thick letter, heavy and heavy, and if it hadn't gone through the army's channels, the letter would have certainly cost Joseph a lot more in postage. Monge opened the envelope and inside was a thick stack of letterhead filled with various numbers and symbols.

　　Meng Ri skimmed through it and knew that the letter, discussed the problem of the limit of the stream number. However, he was about to leave the house at this time, and had no time to study the letter in detail, so Mon Ri stuffed the letter into the pocket of his jacket, and left the house.

　　After finishing his work, it was already past four o'clock in the afternoon. A few coworkers then met to go out for dinner together. Naturally, they also invited Mon Ri. However, Meng Ri declined on the grounds that he still had some personal matters to attend to. The coworkers didn't try to persuade him, so they went on their own.

　　According to Christianity, there are seven kinds of sins that will make a person's soul fall into hell: pride, envy, anger, laziness, greed, gluttony and lust. If this were true, the French would have the highest chance of going to hell because of good eating in Europe. Like the great eating countries of the East, the French, especially the French aristocracy, are known throughout Europe for their "long night's drinking". Compared to Paris, the price of goods in Nice is much cheaper, a variety of seafood is also extremely rich, a few people from the afternoon until late at night, until the food and wine not only stuffed their stomach, and even stuffed their esophagus, all the way up to their throats, they wobbled on the carriage, back to their own place. And it was only when they returned that they realized that the light was still on in the room of Monge, who had been living a very regular life and, according to custom, should have been in bed long ago.

　　"What is Mon Ri doing?" Someone muttered.

　　"What the hell, that deadbeat, just doesn't seem French." Another drunken fellow replied.

　　But these drunken guys weren't really looking into the question of what Monge was doing. So they just mumbled a bit and went back to sleep on their own.

　　Naturally, Monge didn't know what the drunken guys were saying about him outside his door. In front of his desk, there was a large stack of draft paper, which was neatly and densely packed with all kinds of calculation formulas. He frowned, calculating carefully until yet another candle burned out and went out, and the sky outside his window began to glow faintly.

　　"This research of Joseph's is quite good, at least I don't see anything wrong with it right now. Hmmm, he was inspired when he was dealing with the construction of the fortress? It really is good to be young, when I was young my thoughts were much quicker than they are now." Monge put down his quill and sighed.

　　"Joseph should have sent this paper to the Academy of Sciences as well. I wonder what those guys in the Academy of Sciences said about it." Mon Ri finally thought so.

　　Joseph did send this paper to the Academy of Sciences, but there was one thing that Mon Ri still did not anticipate, and that was that Joseph sent a new paper to the Academy of Sciences within a week, and in this paper, he also deduced an important inequality. This inequality was called Cauchy's Inequality in its original history, but today, I'm afraid, it too is being renamed.

　　This was just a starting point, though, and six months later Joseph published another physics paper, A Study of Heat by Friction, in which Joseph used two pieces of ice enclosed in a glass box that had been submerged in water to melt by friction against each other, while a comparison group of two pieces of ice of equal mass and equal temperature naturally melted, and recorded the change in temperature of the water in the two groups. The temperature of the water in the group that used friction did not drop more sharply. Instead, the drop was smaller and the decline curve was flatter. Joseph noted that this phenomenon was the opposite of the inferences that could be made on the basis of the traditional thermal mass theory. Accordingly, he further deduced that the popular thermal mass theory may not be correct.

　　The "thermal mass theory" is a scientific hypothesis that emerged after Lavoisier experimentally disproved the "combustion theory". This hypothesis assumes that heat is a substance called "thermal mass" (caloric), that thermal mass is a massless substance that does not occupy space, that the temperature of an object rises when it absorbs thermal mass, and that thermal mass flows from a warmer object to a cooler one, or through the pores of a solid or liquid.

　　The "thermal mass theory" explains many physical phenomena quite effectively. For example, the cooling of hot tea at room temperature can be explained by the thermal mass theory: the high temperature of the hot tea indicates a high concentration of thermal mass, so the thermal mass will automatically flow into the area of lower thermal mass concentration, i.e., into the cooler surrounding air. The thermal mass theory also explains the expansion of air when it is heated, as the air molecules absorb the thermal mass, making them larger in size. If the details of the process of absorption of thermal mass by air molecules were further analyzed, it could also explain thermal radiation, phase changes of objects at different temperatures, and even most of the gas laws. So until the middle of the nineteenth century, the "thermal mass theory" was the dominant scientific hypothesis. The theory of molecular motion had already been proposed, but at that time, the two doctrines were generally regarded as equivalent.

　　However, the "thermal mass theory" is also flawed. Because the "thermal mass theory" considers "heat" to be a substance, and according to Lomonosov's "law of the indestructibility of matter," "thermal mass" can naturally neither be created out of thin air nor out of thin air. According to Lomonosov's "law of the indestructibility of matter", "heat" can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only be transferred between one object and another. From this follows the natural corollary that if the temperature of one object rises, there must be a fall in the temperature of another object, and the total amount of thermal mass gained by the object that rises should be equal to the total amount of thermal mass lost by the object that cools. This makes it difficult to use this hypothesis to explain phenomena such as frictional heat. In such phenomena, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find an object that has lost "thermal mass". For example, in Joseph's experiment, there was no source of thermal mass to melt ice into water.

　　Unlike Humphry Davy, who was the first person in history to accomplish this experiment. Humphry Davy was not fully aware of the significance behind this experiment, nor did he analyze this experiment mathematically and rigorously. In fact, he didn't pay much attention to the experiment himself, so it was ignored at the time.

　　But unlike Josephus, he also paired this experiment with a more rigorous mathematical analysis, proving that the thermal mass theory and the molecular motion theory were not equivalent in this matter.

　　"Honestly, this paper has pretty much sentenced the thermal mass theory to death!" Laplace said to Lavoisier with a face full of pain, "This guy, Joseph, is a real headache! There are obviously so many things that can be studied in this world, but he always seems to take pleasure in going and destroying people's edifices. He ... he this is really ..."

　　"Yeah, I'm also feeling the pain you guys felt the last time he suggested that light was a wave." Lavoisier replied bitterly, "In fact I just finished a study based on the thermal mass theory."

　　"So have I." Laplace replied, "I just had an idea that maybe I could correct some of the problems with Newton's formula for the speed of sound after factoring in changes in thermal mass. Now, however, that research has just gotten off the ground, and it will almost have to be discontinued for the time being."

　　"That's not a big problem." Lavoisier said, "First of all, your research hasn't been going on for long, and it's not impossible to switch to studying it from the perspective of molecular motion now. And in accordance with Joseph's argument, although molecular motion is not exactly equivalent to the thermal mass theory, in most cases, it can actually be considered equivalent. So there should be very little you have to change. But my research is all done ..."

　　"So, teacher, what do you think of this paper of his?" Laplace asked.

　　"What else can I think?" Lavoisier said, "Like last time, at least for now, I haven't identified any problems with his paper. Surely there must be something wrong with this view of his, how could the thermal mass theory be wrong? At most, there are things that need to be changed, things that need to be added. Well, he also admits that perhaps there are other explanations than his. It's true that the current thermal mass theory is flawed on the issue of friction-generated heat, but that doesn't mean that the thermal mass theory is completely screwed, it just means that for it to continue to hold up, we'd have to tinker with it a lot more ... It's just that at the moment, I haven't found any ideas on how to tinker with it... . this Joseph, always messing us up."

　　Laplace noticed though that Joseph's research was causing Lavoisier so much trouble and much of it conflicted with Lavoisier's research. If it was normal, Ravasi shouldn't have had too favorable an impression of Joseph, but nowadays when Ravasi brought up Joseph, although his mouth was all complaining, the tone of voice and demeanor when he spoke seemed to be saying "this child is really naughty" and didn't contain any malice.

　　"Teacher is actually such a generous person? It's not like that!" Laplace couldn't help but think, "And the fact that he doesn't agree with Joseph at all. If it was someone else who made such a point, say it was me, maybe, maybe the teacher would have stormed out long ago, but why this time, his attitude is this gentle?"

　　"That kid, ah, he's really smart, he's just too much of a troublemaker. You said if he could use all his smarts to be more useful, instead of making trouble for us, how good would it be. Well, when he comes back, I'll be sure to have a good talk with him." Lavoisier didn't notice those thoughts of Laplace's, and continued to say so with a smile.