The birthplace of nuclear energy research

A couple of blocks down from the Metro station Jussieu in Paris’s 5th arrondisement lies Rue Cuvier, which runs along the north-western edge of the botanic gardens which houses the Natural History Museum. The other side of the road is bordered by various institutes of the Sorbonne, notably UPMC (formerly Pierre and Marie Curie University).

The Curies have historical associations with a number of streets in the Latin Quarter, and Rue Cuvier in particular. Pierre Curie was born at No.16 and it was in a science faculty building in this street that the Curies conducted their fundamental research on radium between 1903 and 1914. The building still exists, shielded from public curiosity by a set of prison-style metal gates, and it was in this laboratory that the first pioneering research into what would later be recognized as nuclear energy was conducted in 1903.

Reversible and irreversible change

Reversible change is a key concept in classical thermodynamics. It is important to understand what is meant by the term as it is closely allied to other important concepts such as equilibrium and entropy. But reversible change is not an easy idea to grasp – it helps to be able to visualize it.

James Joule and the end of electrical euphoria

St. Peter’s Parish Church, Bradford

The year is 1845. The location is the vicarage of St. Peter’s Parish Church, Bradford in Northern England. Inside the vicarage two men, one a 55 year-old retired sea captain and the other a 26 year-old brewery manager, have been conducting a series of experiments using a powerful magneto-electric apparatus. The results that they would publish the following year in Philosophical Magazine would prove beyond doubt that the electric motor was not the perpetual motion miracle that many believed, and put an end to the ‘electrical euphoria’ that had swept through Europe and the United States for a decade.