In thermodynamics, George Fordyce (1736-1802) was a Scottish physician and chemist noted for his circa 1785 experiments in which he was said to have measured a gain in the weight of water after it was frozen, thus implying a rather incredulous finding about the nature of heat, i.e. that heat has some type of negative weight, a finding that prompted American-born English physicist Benjamin Thompson to repeat the same experiment in the winter of 1787, resulting in his followup studies on the nature of heat, in particular his famous 1798 cannon-boring experiment, the famous experiment that would eventually go on to lay rest to the caloric theory. [1]
In 1785, Fordyce also reported a loss in the weight of bodies when melted or heated. [2]
References
1. Becker, Barbara J. (2000). Thermodynamics: Count Rumford and Sally Thompson: Student Reader (pg. 3). Kendall Hunt.
2. Fordyce, George. (1785). “Experiments on the Loss of Weight in Bodies on being Melted or Heated”, Royal Society, 1785-1790.
External links
● George Fordyce – Wikipedia.
