The Ancient Mariner and the transit of Venus.
The achievements of William Wales FRS - astronomer, classical scholar, demographer, editor, mathematician, meteorologist and humane teacher - have been overshadowed by the fame of Cook's extraordinary voyages, and overlooked as a significant influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's early development. The Royal Society sent Wales to Hudson Bay, Canada, and James Cook to Tahiti, both to observe the 1769 transit of Venus as part of an international project to calculate solar parallax, and hence the distance to the Sun. Wales later taught mathematics and navigation science at Christ's Hospital School to a precocious Coleridge, whose creative mind translated tales of polar adventures into memorable poetry.
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self
Samuel Pepys is the astonishing biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year. "Immaculately well done. Tomalin has managed to unearth a wealth of material about the uncharted life of Samuel Pepys". (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday). "Sex, drink, plague, fire, music, marital conflict, the fall of kings, corruption and courage in public life, wars, navies, public execution, incarceration in the Tower: Samuel Pepys' life is full of irresistible material, and Claire Tomalin seizes it with both hands. Fast, vivid, accessible". (Hermione Lee, Guardian). "A rich, thoughtful and deeply satisfying account. It takes us behind and beyond the diary - which means that, on finishing it, we can reread the diary with greater pleasure and understanding then ever before". (Noel Malcolm, Evening Standard). "In Claire Tomalin, Pepys has found the biographer he deserves. Her perceptive, level-headed book finally restores to the life of the diarist its weight and dignity". (Lisa Jardine, New Statesman). "A great achievement and a huge pleasure. A vivid chronicle of contemporary history seen through the all too human preoccupations of this ordinary and extraordinary man". (Diana Souhami, Independent). From the acclaimed author of Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, this celebrated biography casts new light on the remarkable diaries of Pepys and brings his story vividly to life once more. Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Effects of reservoir volume on performance of pulse tube cooler.
A pulse tube cooler has the advantages of long-life and low-vibration over conventional cryocoolers such as G-M and Stirling coolers because of the absence of moving parts at low temperature. On the other hand, the combination of a reservoir and orifice is indispensable to optimize the performance of pulse tube coolers. In order to make the pulse tube cooler compact for practical applications, the volume of reservoir should be minimized. This paper analyzes the effects of the reservoir volume on the thermodynamic performance of various components in a simple orifice and a double-inlet pulse tube cooler by combining a linearized model with a thermodynamic analysis. Expressions of entropy production for those components are presented. The results show that the reservoir volume has a significant influence on the entropy production in the various components when the reservoir to pulse tube volume ratio is smaller than about 5. The ratio is important to determine the minimum reservoir volume for a pulse tube cooler. Optimum settings for a double-inlet pulse tube cooler are also discussed.