Talk:William Rankine

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Birth date[edit]

2nd July or 5th July -> [1]? --MacRusgail 20:41, 8 January 2006 (UTC) I have heard of a theoretical construct called a "Rankine disk". Having to do with marine propeller efficiencies. I'm not positive that this is the same rankine, but the name is the same, and the approximate time matches my recollection.[reply]

Rankine did work in naval architecture so it is plausible but I don't have any exact details either. Cutler 08:48, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Getting better[edit]

This page is getting much better by the day, but there are still a number of sections that need work. Unfortunately I don't have the expertise in all the necessary areas, but I would hope that eventually we can raise this to feature article status, if not on the front page, then certainly on the Scotland portal.--MacRusgail 15:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pioneer of Mohr's stress circle?[edit]

See Talk:Christian_Otto_Mohr#Rankine —DIV (128.250.204.118 06:40, 14 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Fatigue section[edit]

I have added more info on Rankine's early work on fatigue but more could be added here. Any volunteers?Peterlewis (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Extra image available[edit]

There is an sketch image of Rankine at s:Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/140 which someone may wish to screen capture. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sources?[edit]

This page has literally almost NO citations. This needs to be fixed. Spirit469 (talk) 07:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Efficiency[edit]

The sentence "Like other thermodynamic cycles, the maximum efficiency of the Rankine cycle is given by calculating the maximum efficiency of the Carnot cycle" is unsound.

Thermodynamics would simply say that the efficiency of a Rankine engine cannot be better than that of an ideal Carnot engine operating with the extreme (hotest and coldest) temperatures of the Rankine engine. Notice the difference.

The maximum efficiency of the Rankine cycle can be calculated upon fair, simple assumptions on the working fluid. Albeit it is always a lesser quantity, it has nothing to do with the efficiency of a Carnot engine.

I would simply dropout the quotation.

Etaoin Shdrlu (talk) 12:25, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Title of the page[edit]

The title of this page is currently “William John Macquorn Rankine”. Using four names instead of two conflicts with Wikipedia’s naming conventions for people at WP:NCP and WP:COMMONNAME. There is no obvious problem with articles about multiple people named William Rankine so I propose the title of the article should be changed to “William Rankine” in accordance with WP:NCP and WP:COMMONNAME. There is an existing redirect to “William Rankine”, and after the change I am proposing, the title “William John Macquorn Rankine” will remain as a redirect. Dolphin (t) 22:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ten days have passed since my previous posting but there has been no response, either in favour or against my proposal. I have examined the question of Rankine’s most commonly used first name and it seems it was Macquorn, not William or John. The infobox in the article contains an image of his signature – “W.J. Macquorn Rankine”. Also his biography at the current website “Memoirs and portraits of one hundred Glasgow men” is titled “J. Macquorn Rankine” – see J. Macquorn Rankine.

I am now intending to reduce the title of the article to Macquorn Rankine in order to match the guidance at WP:NCP and WP:COMMONNAME. Dolphin (t) 21:37, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the page from "William John Macquorn Rankine" to "Macquorn Rankine". Dolphin (t) 04:08, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

look, there is no conceivable reason to move the page to the third given name, unless it can be shown that this was the given name which he preferred at least during a part of his lifetime. It's going to have to be William Rankine, or if this is ambiguous, either William Rankine (physicist) or William John Macquorn Rankine, whichever is preferable under WP:NAME. --dab (𒁳) 08:58, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ok, I did some (superficial) research on this. It isn't immediately clear which should be the "most common name" under WP:NAME. I used the google book searches

"macquorn rankine" -"john macquorn"
"william rankine"

google books no longer gives a reliable estimate on the number of hits, but paging through the result, it appears that these two searches both give of the order of 200 hits in printed publications. It appears that "William Rankine" is the most frequently used short name, and "Macquorn Rankine" is used some time, but the 200 results mentioned also include instances of "W. J. Rankine" and "William J. Macquorn Rankine". Some publications have hyphenated "Macquorn-Rankine", this is either a mistake, or else Macquorn isn't really a third given name but some sort of clan name?

It appears that Rankine, when not using the full "William John Macquorn Rankine", is most often referred to as either "W. J. Rankine", or "W. J. Macquorn Rankine", or "William Rankine", followed by "William J. Macquorn Rankine" and "Macquorn Rankine"/"Macquorn-Rankine". The "Life" section talks about young "William", so if the given name in the article title is changed from William to Macquorn, I suggest this would also need to be adjusted. --dab (𒁳) 09:09, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

actually, it turns out that "William John Macquorn Rankine" gets more hits on google books than any other combination, about 300 hits. So while it is not usually best practice to use the full string of given names, in this particular case, "William John Macquorn Rankine" is a viable candidate as WP:UCN simply because it is used more frequently than any other single alternative. --dab (𒁳) 09:13, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to find information on the given name (?) Macquorn and I came up empty. It seems that (a) nobody other than Rankine himself has the given name Macquorn, (b) Rankine's name is also spelled "McQuorn" with some frequency, and (c) McQuorn does come up as an Irish surname. More research is needed on this, especially if he was given this name at baptism, presumably out of some eccentricity of his father, or if he adopted it at some point for some sort of genealogical reason (as he also changed the spelling Rankin to Rankine this may be a possibility). --dab (𒁳) 09:23, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see, I did some work on this topic last year. First, I raised the matter for discussion on this Talk page. I gave it 10 days for others to participate with their thoughts. I then moved the page based on my research. In contrast, you initiated a discussion and moved the page to a new title, all on 15 July.

I don’t recall all the results of my research but I can immediately make one important comment: the article has an Infobox, and it contains a photograph of Rankine’s signature. He signed himself W J Macquorn Rankine. Dolphin (t) 12:21, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]