Thomas Young Trivia

1. Young's XXX was named in his honour. What is XXX?

From Quiz The Natural Philosopher

Answer: Modulus

Young's Modulus is a constant in the mathematical equation describing elasticity - it is sometimes called the modulus of elasticity. He called it the 'specific modulus'.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: Quaker

He took up frivolous practices such as going to the Theatre, learning the flute and dancing, which led to him being disowned in February 1796. He was a member of Emmanuel College at Cambridge and a book of bets still exists. Young won bets on the angle subtended by the sun and drawing 100 lines with a pen in the space of one inch.

From Quiz The Natural Philosopher

Answer: Investigation into the nature of light.

It provided the basic element in the development of the wave theory and was first performed in 1801. Young identified the phenomenon called interference. In the experiment light from a single source is split into two beams and then recombined giving a pattern of light and dark fringes, Young concluded that the fringes result from the fact that when the beams recombine their peaks and troughs may not be in step. When peaks coincide they reinforce each other, and a line of light results; when a peak and a trough coincide they cancel each other, and a dark line results. Newton had said light consisted of particles and at that time in England challenging anything Newton said was almost like challenging the bible so Young received a lot of opposition. In 1817 he proposed that light waves were at right angles to the direction of travel rather than in the direction of travel, which explains polarization.

From Quiz The Natural Philosopher

Answer: Energy

In the sense Young used it energy is the capacity for doing work and in the scientific sense no work is done unless something moves. Young had other firsts such as his work on terrestrial radiant heat and estimating the size of a molecule (although he was out by about 100 times and Laplace also estimated it independently).

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: Astigmatism

Nyctalopia is night blindness. Smectymnuus is an acronym based on the names of the authors for beliefs set out in a 1641 English book upholding the Presbyterian theory of ministry against Anglicanism. The TY refers to a man called Thomas Young! Presbyopia is the loss of ability to focus the eye sharply on near objects. Young developed his own optometer. A comment on his description of it throws some light on his writing style - Dr Young being in the ship of science seems to expect the disciple to arrive without a boat.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: A "rule of the thumb" method for calculating the dose of medicine to be administered to a child.

There is a law for deducing one language from another. It is called Grimm's Law that works on Germanic languages (the Grimm's are better known for their fairy stories). Chromatic aberration is when coloured fringes appear round images. It is caused by different wavelengths being bent different amounts.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: A method of tuning keyboard instruments such as pianos.

Young had criticised a paper by Henry Brougham (the 1878-1868 orator and wit who had the carriage named after him not the 1827-1900 Henry Brougham) which caused resentment and some effective written attacks by Brougham . One web site says 'I finally had my piano retuned ala Thomas Young. My simple piano is bursting with character'. The difference between Young's temperament and equal temperament is very small (a maximum of nine percent of a semitone according to the same site).

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: von Helmholtz

It is the Young-von Helmholtz three-colour theory. Much of Young's work was forgotten - Rayleigh the 1904 Nobel Prize winner commented on Young's 'many remarkable anticipations' such as his work on Molecular attraction, which was thought to be first worked on in about 1870. Amici (1786-1863) rediscovered some of his work, which is used in the design of high-powered microscopes. In 1923 a prize winning essay by professor Proudman included work that rediscovered work done by Young on tides in 1813.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: Secretary of the Board of Longitude.

The board was originally set up to deal with the navigational problem solved by Harrison's chronometer but it was still functioning in 1818. It principally produced the nautical almanac published by the Admiralty and had other functions such as administering the prize for the discovery of the northwest passage (there were several sums depending on how far you got). The 'Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds' is a genuine position. Since 1623 British members of parliament cannot resign but they can vacate their seat for various reasons including holding a paid office from the Crown. The Chiltern Hundreds and the manor of Northstead are two jobs that are retained so they can resign. A hundred is an obsolete sub division of a county and the Chilterns are a range of hills.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: Silvestre de Sacy

De Sacy started work in 1802. He identified the names Ptolemy, Alexander and Alexandria but made little or no progress. Akerblad (a Swede) made some further progress soon after De Sacy but neither made much progress after their initial success. Champollion started work in 1805 (but he was only 15) and Young started work in 1814.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: 61

He wrote 45 biographical articles plus ones on such diverse subjects as Annuities, Bathing, Carpentry, Herculaneum and Languages. He was also asked to write articles on some subjects he did not consider himself qualified to write on e.g. Blasting and Boring where he said he was now ten years out of date.

From Quiz The Natural Philosopher

Answer: Six

The only name on the Rosetta stone is Ptolemy - written as PTOLMIS or PTULMIS. He deduced the name in another inscription with what he correctly believed to be the female indicator was Ptolemy's queen Berenike - written as BRNKIS. He later identified other signs. Incidentally the main problem with deciphering ancient Egyptian using the Rosetta stone is that the three sections are not direct translations of each other.

From Quiz The Last Man To Know Everything?

Answer: As a protest against slavery.

Many people, especially Quakers were making this form of protest at this time.

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