Cornell Gets It Wrong On Thermoelectrics

Cornell Gets It Wrong On Thermoelectrics

The website of a research group specialising in thermoelectric materials at Cornell University in the USA contains fundamental errors in its definitions of the basic thermoelectric effects.

In its confusion the group has attributed the discovery of a thermoelectric phenomenon first deduced and demonstrated in the 1850s by William Thomson to Thomas Johann Seebeck, who had actually died more than twenty years earlier. See:

http://www.chem.cornell.edu/fjd3/thermo/intro.html

This error may be due in part to the the general misconception that since the discovery of the fundamental thermoelectric effects are attributable to just three nineteenth century scientists, then there are only three fundamental effects.

Not so - see "The Four Thermoelectric Effects" at:

http://its.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=3700

Indeed, in order to compensate for the inevitable discrepancy, the Cornell website goes on to describe the real Seebeck effect using its own invented term, the "differential Seebeck effect", under the heading "Thermocouples".

The effect whereby an electrical potential is produced by a variation in temperature in a single electrical conductor is correctly termed the "Thomson effect". See:

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/Sensors/#CPS

(I naturally favour European scientists)

Since this effect may be considered a basic property of all materials, it might be appropriate to regarded it as THE fundamental thermoelectric effect. And the actual Seebeck effect, which requires two dissimilar conductors in contact with each other to produce, might then be logically termed the "differential thermoelectric effect".

But the term "differential Seebeck effect" is a nonsense.

What the Cornell site uses this term to describe is in fact the Seebeck effect.

Generally speaking, Cornell University is a well respected academic establishment.

Can the International Thermoelectric society not bring any gentle pressure to bear on Cornell's thermoelectric research group to correct its errors in order that the unintentional dissemination of false information regarding thermoelectric phenomena might be prevented?

Keith P Walsh