Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 7.1 Results of Buffon's heating and cooling experiments on metal
spheres of various diameters.
Cooling time
to hand-hot
temperature
Cooling time
to ambient
temperature
Heating time to
incandescence
Half-inch sphere 2minutes
12minutes
39minutes
1-inch sphere
5.5minutes
35.5minutes
1 hour
33minutes
1.5-inch sphere
9minutes
58minutes
2 hours
25minutes
2-inch sphere
13minutes
1 hour
20minutes
3 hours
16minutes
2.5-inch sphere
16minutes
1 hour
42minutes
4 hours
30minutes
3-inch sphere
19.5minutes
2 hours
7minutes
5 hours
8minutes
3.5-inch sphere
23.5minutes
2 hours
30minutes
5 hours
56minutes
4-inch sphere
27.5minutes
3 hours
2minutes
6 hours
55minutes
4.5-inch sphere
31minutes
3 hours
25minutes
7 hours
46minutes
5-inch sphere
34minutes
3 hours
52minutes
8 hours
42minutes
(232 8C), and allowed them all to cool down sufficiently so that he
could hold them in his hand for half a second. That of iron cooled in
thirteen minutes, copper in eleven and a half minutes, Montbard
marble in ten, gres (a fine grained sedimentary rock) in nine, lead in
eight and tin in six and a half. He then worked on other materials
including white marble, a soft calcareous stone from Dijon, gold,
silver, zinc, antimony, bismuth, gypsum, glass and porcelain, and
later deposited the metallic globes in the Royal Collection in Paris.
