Lord Kelvin

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to carry out work in a laboratory in order to gain practical experience and competence in experimental work.
At the age of only 22 Kelvin was elected to professor of physics (the 'chair of natural philosophy') as a result of a very well organized campaign run by his father, who was still a professor of mathematics. Kelvin remained at the University of Glasgow for the rest of his working life. He was a practical man, and on occasion during lectures on the conservation of momentum he would give a demonstration of this to his students. At one end of the lecture room he would suspend a large block of wood like a pendulum and at the other he would have a gun. By firing the gun at the block of wood the bullet would become embedded in an unrealistic collision passing momentum to the combined block of wood and bullet. By measuring the amplitude of the oscillation, the momentum and speed of the bullet could be calculated. Needless to say, this experiment was eventually stopped for safety ...

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