British physicist who developed the Kelvin scale of temperature (1848) and supervised the laying of a trans-Atlantic cable (1866). |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
n. pl. kelvin Abbr. K 1. A unit of absolute temperature equal to 1/273.16 of the absolute temperature of the triple point of water. One kelvin degree is equal to one Celsius degree. See Table at measurement. 2. Kelvin A temperature scale in which zero occurs at absolute zero and each degree equals one kelvin. Water freezes at 273.15 K and boils at 373.15 K. [After First Baron Kelvin.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.