THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF TELLURIUM. 
ARTHUR R. FORTSCH. 
Until September, 1915, when this research was undertaken, no 
work had been done on the thermal conductivity of tellurium. 
During the year 1915-1916, however, King 1 in collaboration with 
Wold 2 published some work on tellurium in which values were 
given for its thermal conductivity. In this article will appear: 
(1) A brief outline of the method used by the author, which was 
entirely different from that of Wold 3 and King 4 ; (2) A sum- 
mary of the results obtained by this method; and (3) A com- 
parison between these results and those of Wold 5 and King. 6 
The method is based on that of Christiansen 7 with a guard 
ring idea of Sieg. 8 Imagine two parallel planes in a body of 
area A a distance d apart, the respective temperatures being e x 
and e 2 . The quantity Q of heat conducted across in the time t 
is given by the equation: Q = K where K is the 
thermal conductivity. Now suppose that we have two disks of 
different materials arranged as in figure 31 below, with a heating 
device above and a cooling device beneath the disks. After a 
certain time a condition of equilibrium is established. We make 
the following assumptions : 
(1) The quantity of heat flowing down 
through the disks a and b is the same. 
(2) The areas of the disks are equal. 
(3) The end losses from the edges of the 
disks are negligible. 
1 Phys. Rev., Dec., 1915, p. 43T. 
2 Phys. Rev., Feb., 1916, p. 169. 
3 Loc. cit. 
4 Loc. cit. 
5 Loc. cit. . 
6 Loc. cit.. 
7 Ann. d. Phys. u. Chem. 14, 1881, p. 23. 
8 Phys. Rev., Sept., 1915, p. 213. 
Heater. 
disk a. 
disk b. 
Cooler. 
Figure 31 
