Page:Biographies of Scientific Men.djvu/246

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BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN

elements of this world to be distributed as they are and in such proportions? Why gold rarer than iron, and iron than clay? Why the optical rotation of life-compounds (such as tartaric acid, lactic acid, etc.), and not of the synthetical acids? Why a globe adapted not merely in the quality of its materials but in their quantity and distribution to the wants of living beings and to their evolution? Kelvin answered firmly and unwaveringly: "Because all living things depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."

Lord Kelvin had a limp, which was due to his early enthusiasm for curling. He had the misfortune to break his leg twice on the ice, and a third time it had to be rebroken in order to make a better setting.

The Manchester philosopher Joule had investigated the phenomena attending the evolution of heat during the passage of a current through an electrolyte, and it was proved that the total quantity of heat could be separated into two parts. "One part was expressible as the result of overcoming ordinary resistance, and the other part was due to chemical changes in the cell. He then determined the quantity of heat evolved, during a given time, in a process of electrolysis by a current of given strength; then, by applying Ohm's law, and the law stated connecting heat with resistance and current, he found the heat which would have been evolved, had a