Sec. 5.  THE MEASURE OF TEMPERATURE

From the three mechanical units we derive secondary units; as, for instance, the unit of work or mechanical energy.  The kinetic theory takes temperature, as well as heat itself, to be a quantity of energy, and thus seems to connect this notion with the magnitudes of mechanics.  But the legitimacy of this theory cannot be admitted, and the calorific movement should also be a phenomenon so strictly confined in space that our most delicate means of investigation would not enable us to perceive it.  It is better, then, to continue to regard the unit of difference of temperature as a distinct unit, to be added to the fundamental units.

To define the measure of a certain temperature, we take, in practice, some arbitrary property of a body.  The only necessary condition of this property is, that it should constantly vary in the same direction when the temperature rises, and that it should possess, at any temperature, a well-marked value.  We measure this value by melting ice and by the vapour of boiling water under normal pressure, and the successive hundredths of its variation, beginning with the melting ice, defines the percentage.  Thermodynamics, however, has made it plain that we can set up a thermometric scale without relying upon any determined property of a real body.  Such a scale has an absolute value independently of the properties of matter.  Now it happens that if we make use for the estimation of temperatures, of the phenomena of dilatation under a constant pressure, or of the increase of pressure in a constant volume of a gaseous body, we obtain a scale very near the absolute, which almost coincides with it when the gas possesses certain qualities which make it nearly what is called a perfect gas.  This most lucky coincidence has decided the choice of the convention adopted by physicists.  They define normal temperature by means of the variations of pressure in a mass of hydrogen beginning with the initial pressure of a metre of mercury at 0 deg.  C.

M.P.  Chappuis, in some very precise experiments conducted with much method, has proved that at ordinary temperatures the indications of such a thermometer are so close to the degrees of the theoretical scale that it is almost impossible to ascertain the value of the divergences, or even the direction that they take.  The divergence becomes, however, manifest when we work with extreme temperatures.  It results from the useful researches of M. Daniel Berthelot that we must subtract +0.18 deg. from the indications of the hydrogen thermometer towards the temperature -240 deg.  C, and add +0.05 deg. to 1000 deg. to equate them with the thermodynamic scale.  Of course, the difference would also become still more noticeable on getting nearer to the absolute zero; for as hydrogen gets more and more cooled, it gradually exhibits in a lesser degree the characteristics of a perfect gas.