“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last”*…

From the arcane through the mysterious to the perplexing, a glorious collecton of obscure– but fascinating– knowledge…

Freakpages is a community-curated directory of esoteric articles across the internet, primarily from Wikipedia. Here, we encourage you to learn about interesting topics you have never heard of…

… divided into categories (Society, History, Technology, Psychology, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Finance, Philosphy), with continuously refreshed selections from both the curators and the community.

A few examples: Egregore, Operation Northwoods, Matrioshka Brain, Zeigarnik Effect, Retrocausality, Horizontal Gene Transfer, Strange Matter Seeding, Keynesian Beauty Contest, Chinese Room…

So many more at: Freakpages

[Image above: source]

* Samuel Johnson

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As we explore, we might spare a thought for a man driven by an endles spirit of inquiry, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin; he died on this date in 1907. A mathematician, mathematical physicist, and engineer considered by many “the Newton of his era,” Lord Kelvin was instrumental in the formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and contributed significantly to unifying physics, which was then in its infancy of development as an emerging academic discipline. He received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1883 and served as its president from 1890 to 1895. In 1892 he became the first scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. Absolute temperatures are stated in units of kelvin in his honor.

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#art #culture #curiosity #engineering #Freakpages #history #Kelvin #knowledge #lawsOfThermodynamics #literature #LordKelvin #Mathematics #music #philosophy #politics #Science #Technology #thermodynamics #WilliamThomson

William Thomson / Kelvin explaining piezo-electricity in 1893.

#WilliamThomson #Kelvin #piezoCrystals #79 #SystemsThatMatter

Heute vor 200 Jahren wurde William #Thomson geboren. Er entdeckte die nach ihm benannte Schwingkreisformel. Er ist auch als Lord #Kelvin bekannt, Die absolute Temperatur-Skala wurde nach ihm benannt.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomson,_1._Baron_Kelvin

#WilliamThomson #LordKelvin

"[In 1687] Isaac Newton explained how the gravitational forces of the sun and the moon caused [the tides]. Nine decades later, the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace suggested that the tides could be represented as harmonic oscillations. And a century after that, Thomson used that concept to design the first machine for predicting them."

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tide-predictions

#LordKelvin #WilliamThomson #Tides #AnalogComputers #Engineering #Technology #Calculations

The former residence of William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, at 11 Professors' Square on the University of Glasgow's Gilmorehill Campus.

The Professor of Natural Philisophy for 53 years, he helped define absolute zero (the lowest possible temperature in the universe), and create the modern information superhighway through his work on trans-Atlantic cables.

Cont./

#glasgow #glasgowuniversity #williamthomson #lordkelvin