Referee's report by Hugh Longbourne Callendar, on a paper 'A determination by a thermal method of the variation of the critical velocity of water with temperature' by Howard Turner Barnes and Ernest George Coker

Description

Sectional committee: [Engineering science]

He communicated the paper to the Section at the meeting of the British Association. Afterwards he wrote to Mr Barnes advising him to delay publication until he had made more experiments as the observations at higher temperatures showed discrepancies of 20-30% and the results deduced were less than half the theoretical values. He also told Barnes it would be necessary to send an abstract if he wanted the paper to appear in the British Association report. He was not then aware that Barnes also intended to send the paper into the Proceedings.

Barnes has not yet replied to him but has already sent an abstract to the Secretary of the British Association which is now in print for the report. Omitting the table, plates and description of plates, the text of the abstract is practically identical with the present paper. The complete omission of details of observations makes it impossible to estimate the value of the experimental evidence in the abstract. Publication of these further details by the Society would certainly be an advantage to students of the subject, but on the other hand it might be regarded as in some sense an endorsement of work, which is almost certainly incorrect. It would be desirable to give the authors an opportunity of reconsidering and repeating their work.

[Not published]

Endorsed on verso as received 28 October 1901.

Reference number

RR/15/155

Earliest possible date

28 October 1901

Physical description

Report on paper

Page extent

2 pages

Format

Typescript