An Unromantic Waterfall

It was not what she had expected, on a honeymoon in the Alps you admired waterfalls, perhaps sketched them. What you did not do was stand beside your new husband as he measured the temperature of the water at the top of the fall, and noted down the figures his friend shouted up from the bottom.

“The water is warmer at the bottom of the waterfall,” his friend told her, “he is proving that heat is produced from motion. Mrs Joule, your name will be famous.”

She doubted it.

She was wrong.

Joule = the international unit of energy.

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This is in response to Charlie Mills April 11, 2022, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story using the phrase, water falls. Where is the water coming from? How does it shape a story? Who does it involve? Go where the prompt leads!

I was drawn to one of the most remarkable experiments of Victorian science, in 1847 when James Joule, who was on his honeymoon, and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) tried to measure the temperature difference between the top and bottom of the Cascade de Sallanches waterfall.

They were both brilliant men, Joule’s work on heat led to the SI unit of energy being called after him, Thompson determined the temperature of absolute zero, leading to the temperature scale, Kelvin, named after him.