72 Mr. James Rice on 



perfectly impervious to radiation. According to the theoretical 

 results the iron ought to lose energy continually until its tem- 

 perature became practically absolute zero, and the whole energy 

 of the system had passed into the surrounding ether, and was 

 contained almost entirely in those vibrations of the ether which 

 were of the very highest frequency. So far from this actually 

 happening, the experimental evidences indicates with some 

 certainty that a steady state is rapidly reached in which the 

 density of the energy in the ether is about 40 millionths of an erg 

 per c.c, while that in the iron is about 8,000 million ergs per c.c. 

 Actually all the energy, with an infinitesimal exception, resides in 

 the comparatively few degrees of freedom of the iron, while the 

 enormously greater nnmber of degrees of freedom of the ether 

 are almost devoid of energy. Nothing further from equipai^tition 

 between the matter and the ether could hardly be imagined. 



Here then we are faced with a serious discrepancy. It is not 

 the only one. There is another one concerned with the division of 

 the energy between the degrees of freedom of the matter itself, 

 and there are some concerned with such points as the electrical 

 and thermal conductivities of the metals. Time does not permit 

 me to enter into any account of these, but this much may be said ; 

 if we can find the key to the first riddle it will in all probability 

 give us the answers to the others. It is the master problem, the 

 interaction between ether and matter. 



To sum up the situation as it presents itself to us, we see that 

 the application of Newtonian Dynamics, as embodied in Maxwell's 

 equations, to the interaction between matter and the ether (the 

 latter being regarded as a continuous medium, or at least one 

 with an excessively fine structure) leads to a partition of energy 

 between the ether and the matter in a constant temperature 

 enclosure, and also a partition of the energy in the ether itself 

 among its various simple types of vibration, which is wholly at 

 variance with experimental observation. Nothing could be 

 further from equipartition than the state graphically represented 

 on the slides just shown. 



