James Clerk Maxwell Essay, Research Paper

Introduction

Have you ever left a football outside? If you have you probably noticed it got smaller. And when you took it inside and set it next to a furnace or a vent blowing hot air, the ball tends to get a little bigger. This process can be best described by the Kinetic Molecular theory. James Clerk Maxwell thought up this theory. Maxwell is a scientist who led an interesting life and along the way developed the Kinetic Molecular theory.

James Clerk Maxwell was born on June 13, 1831 in Scotland, England quote “R.G. Jordan page 1of 5”. According to Jordan he was eight years old when his mother passed away. His parents’ plans of trying to home school him to the age of 13 fell through after the tragic event. So his dad hired a sixteen year old boy to tutor him. And that failed so he went to the Edinburgh Academy. At the school his schoolmates often thought of him as odd and taunted him by calling him “Daffy”. Though he got off to a slow start at the academy he started showing that he had some extraordinary talents. His talents were shown through his mathematic skill and the writing of English verse. And when he was 15 he received from the academy medals for a paper he published about mathematics over drawings generalized ovals with pins and thread. At the age of 16 he visited William Nicol who was the inventor of the polarizing prism. When he went home he made some colored drawings of polarized light. He was rewarded with a set of polarizing prisms.