History of thermodynamics - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The history of thermodynamics is a fundamental strand in the history of physics

History of physics

As forms of science historically developed out of philosophy, physics was originally referred to as natural philosophy, a term describing a field of study concerned with "the workings of nature".-Early history:...

, the history of chemistry

History of chemistry

By 1000 BC, ancient civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, making pigments for cosmetics and painting, extracting chemicals from...

, and the history of science

History of science

The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....

in general. Owing to the relevance of thermodynamics

Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...

in much of science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

and technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

, its history is finely woven with the developments of classical mechanics

Classical mechanics

In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...

, quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

, magnetism

Magnetism

Magnetism is a property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetism is the strongest and most familiar type of magnetism. It is responsible for the behavior of permanent magnets, which produce their own persistent magnetic fields, as well...

, and chemical kinetics

Chemical kinetics

Chemical kinetics, also known as reaction kinetics, is the study of rates of chemical processes. Chemical kinetics includes investigations of how different experimental conditions can influence the speed of a chemical reaction and yield information about the reaction's mechanism and transition...

, to more distant applied fields such as meteorology

Meteorology

Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...

, information theory

Information theory

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...

, and biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

(physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

), and to technological

Technology

developments such as the steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

, internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...

, cryogenics

Cryogenics

In physics, cryogenics is the study of the production of very low temperature and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. A person who studies elements under extremely cold temperature is called a cryogenicist. Rather than the relative temperature scales of Celsius and Fahrenheit,...

and electricity generation

Electricity generation

Electricity generation is the process of generating electric energy from other forms of energy.The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday...

. The development of thermodynamics both drove and was driven by atomic theory

Atomic theory

In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms, as opposed to the obsolete notion that matter could be divided into any arbitrarily small quantity...

. It also, albeit in a subtle manner, motivated new directions in probability

Probability

Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

and statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

; see, for example, the timeline of thermodynamics.

Contributions from ancient and medieval times

The ancients viewed heat

Heat

In physics and thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one body, region, or thermodynamic system to another due to thermal contact or thermal radiation when the systems are at different temperatures. It is often described as one of the fundamental processes of energy transfer between...

as that related to fire

Fire

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....

. In 3000 BC, the ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

ians viewed heat as related to origin mythologies.
In the Western philosophical

Western philosophy

Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....

tradition, after much debate about the primal element among earlier pre-Socratic philosopher

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Pre-Socratic philosophy is Greek philosophy before Socrates . In Classical antiquity, the Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi...

s, Empedocles

Empedocles

Empedocles was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements...

proposed a four-element theory, in which all substances derive from earth

Earth (classical element)

Earth, home and origin of humanity, has often been worshipped in its own right with its own unique spiritual tradition.-European tradition:Earth is one of the four classical elements in ancient Greek philosophy and science. It was commonly associated with qualities of heaviness, matter and the...

, water

Water (classical element)

Water is one of the elements in ancient Greek philosophy, in the Asian Indian system Panchamahabhuta, and in the Chinese cosmological and physiological system Wu Xing...

, air

Air (classical element)

Air is often seen as a universal power or pure substance. Its supposed fundamental importance to life can be seen in words such as aspire, inspire, perspire and spirit, all derived from the Latin spirare.-Greek and Roman tradition:...

, and fire

Fire (classical element)

Fire has been an important part of all cultures and religions from pre-history to modern day and was vital to the development of civilization. It has been regarded in many different contexts throughout history, but especially as a metaphysical constant of the world.-Greek and Roman tradition:Fire...

. The Empedoclean element of fire is perhaps the principal ancestor of later concepts such as phlogiston and caloric

Caloric theory

The caloric theory is an obsolete scientific theory that heat consists of a self-repellent fluid called caloric that flows from hotter bodies to colder bodies. Caloric was also thought of as a weightless gas that could pass in and out of pores in solids and liquids...

. Around 500 BC, the Greek philosopher

Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...

Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...

became famous as the "flux and fire" philosopher for his proverbial utterance: "All things are flowing." Heraclitus argued that the three principal elements in nature were fire, earth, and water.

Atomism

Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...

is a central part of today's relationship between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Ancient thinkers such as Leucippus

Leucippus

Leucippus or Leukippos was one of the earliest Greeks to develop the theory of atomism — the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms — which was elaborated in greater detail by his pupil and successor, Democritus...

and Democritus

Democritus

Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He was an influential pre-Socratic philosopher and pupil of Leucippus, who formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos....

, and later the Epicureans, by advancing atomism, laid the foundations for the later atomic theory

Atomic theory

. Until experimental proof of atoms was later provided in the 20th century, the atomic theory was driven largely by philosophical considerations and scientific intuition. Consequently, ancient philosophers used atomic theory to reach conclusions that today may be viewed as immature: for example, Democritus gives a vague atomistic description of the soul, namely that it is "built from thin, smooth, and round atoms, similar to those of fire".

The 5th century BC, Greek philosopher Parmenides

Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

, in his only known work, a poem conventionally titled On Nature, uses verbal reasoning to postulate that a void, essentially what is now known as a vacuum

Vacuum

In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

, in nature could not occur. This view was supported by the arguments of Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, but was criticized by Leucippus

Leucippus

and Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineerEnc. Britannica 2007, "Heron of Alexandria" who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt...

. From antiquity to the Middle Ages various arguments were put forward to prove or disapprove the existence of a vacuum and several attempts were made to construct a vacuum but all proved unsuccessful.

The European scientists Cornelius Drebbel

Cornelius Drebbel

Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel was the Dutch builder of the first navigable submarine in 1620. Drebbel was an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, optics and chemistry....

, Robert Fludd

Robert Fludd

Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus was a prominent English Paracelsian physician, astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist, Rosicrucian apologist...

, Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...

and Santorio Santorio in the 16th and 17th centuries were able to gauge the relative "coldness" or "hotness

Hotness

Hotness may refer to:* High temperature* A slang term for sexual attractiveness* Piquance, the spiciness or pungency of food, such as of hot peppers* The Scoville scale, a numerical scale for expressing the degree of piquance...

" of air, using a rudimentary air thermometer

Thermometer

Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...

(or thermoscope). This may have been influenced by an earlier device which could expand and contract the air constructed by Philo of Byzantium

Philo of Byzantium

Philo of Byzantium , also known as Philo Mechanicus, was a Greek engineer and writer on mechanics, who lived during the latter half of the 3rd century BC...

and Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineerEnc. Britannica 2007, "Heron of Alexandria" who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt...

.

Around 1600, the English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

surmised: "Heat itself, its essence and quiddity is motion and nothing else." In 1643, Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

, while generally accepting the 'sucking' explanation of horror vacui proposed by Aristotle, believed that nature’s vacuum-abhorrence is limited. Pumps operating in mines had already proven that nature would only fill a vacuum with water up to a height of ~30 feet. Knowing this curious fact, Galileo encouraged his former pupil Evangelista Torricelli

Evangelista Torricelli

Evangelista Torricelli was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer.-Biography:Evangelista Torricelli was born in Faenza, part of the Papal States...

to investigate these supposed limitations. Torricelli did not believe that vacuum-abhorrence (Horror vacui
Horror vacui
thumb|Many paintings by [[Outsider Art]]ist [[Adolf Wölfli]] contain space filled with writing or musical notationIn visual art, horror vacui is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork with detail....

) in the sense of Aristotle's 'sucking' perspective, was responsible for raising the water. Rather, he reasoned, it was the result of the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding air.

To prove this theory, he filled a long glass tube (sealed at one end) with mercury and upended it into a dish also containing mercury. Only a portion of the tube emptied (as shown adjacent); ~30 inches of the liquid remained. As the mercury emptied, and a vacuum

Vacuum

was created at the top of the tube. This, the first man-made vacuum, effectively disproved Aristotle’s 'sucking' theory and affirmed the existence of vacuums in nature. The gravitational force on the heavy element that is Mercury prevented it from filling the vacuum. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but gravity does not care.

Transition from chemistry to thermochemistry

The theory of phlogiston arose in the 17th century, late in the period of alchemy. Its replacement by caloric theory

Caloric theory

in the 18th century is one of the historical markers of the transition from alchemy to chemistry. Phlogiston was a hypothetical substance that was presumed to be liberated from combustible substances during burning

Combustion

Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...

, and from metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

s during the process of rusting. Caloric, like phlogiston, was also presumed to be the "substance" of heat that would flow from a hotter body to a cooler body, thus warming it.

The first substantial experimental challenges to caloric theory arose in Rumford

Benjamin Thompson

Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford , FRS was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He also served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Loyalist forces in America during the American...

's 1798 work, when he showed that boring cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

cannon

Cannon

A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

s produced great amounts of heat which he ascribed to friction

Friction

Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:...

, and his work was among the first to undermine the caloric theory. The development of the steam engine

Steam engine

also focused attention on calorimetry

Calorimetry

Calorimetry is the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes. Calorimetry is performed with a calorimeter. The word calorimetry is derived from the Latin word calor, meaning heat...

and the amount of heat produced from different types of coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

. The first quantitative research on the heat changes during chemical reactions was initiated by Lavoisier using an ice

Ice

Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

calorimeter

Calorimeter

A calorimeter is a device used for calorimetry, the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity. Differential scanning calorimeters, isothermal microcalorimeters, titration calorimeters and accelerated rate calorimeters are among the most common...

frollowing research by Joseph Black

Joseph Black

Joseph Black FRSE FRCPE FPSG was a Scottish physician and chemist, known for his discoveries of latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. He was professor of Medicine at University of Glasgow . James Watt, who was appointed as philosophical instrument maker at the same university...

on the latent heat

Latent heat

Latent heat is the heat released or absorbed by a chemical substance or a thermodynamic system during a process that occurs without a change in temperature. A typical example is a change of state of matter, meaning a phase transition such as the melting of ice or the boiling of water. The term was...

of water.

More quantitative studies by James Prescott Joule

James Prescott Joule

James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The...

in 1843 onwards provided soundly reproducible phenomena, and helped to place the subject of thermodynamics on a solid footing. William Thomson

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...

, for example, was still trying to explain Joule's observations within a caloric framework as late as 1850. The utility and explanatory power of kinetic theory

Kinetic theory

The kinetic theory of gases describes a gas as a large number of small particles , all of which are in constant, random motion. The rapidly moving particles constantly collide with each other and with the walls of the container...

, however, soon started to displace caloric and it was largely obsolete by the end of the 19th century. Joseph Black

Joseph Black

and Lavoisier made important contributions in the precise measurement of heat changes using the calorimeter

Calorimeter

, a subject which became known as thermochemistry

Thermochemistry

Thermochemistry is the study of the energy and heat associated with chemical reactions and/or physical transformations. A reaction may release or absorb energy, and a phase change may do the same, such as in melting and boiling. Thermochemistry focuses on these energy changes, particularly on the...

Phenomenological thermodynamics

Boyle's law
Boyle's law
Boyle's law is one of many gas laws and a special case of the ideal gas law. Boyle's law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system...

(1662)
Charles's law
Charles's law
Charles' law is an experimental gas law which describes how gases tend to expand when heated. It was first published by French natural philosopher Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, although he credited the discovery to unpublished work from the 1780s by Jacques Charles...

was first published by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
- External links :* from the American Chemical Society* from the Encyclopædia Britannica, 10th Edition * , Paris...

in 1802, but he referenced unpublished work by Jacques Charles
Jacques Charles
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist.Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first hydrogen-filled balloon in August 1783, then in December 1783, Charles and his co-pilot Nicolas-Louis Robert ascended to a height of about...

from around 1787. The relationship had been anticipated by the work of Guillaume Amontons
Guillaume Amontons
Guillaume Amontons was a French scientific instrument inventor and physicist. He was one of the pioneers in tribology, apart from Leonardo da Vinci, John Theophilus Desaguliers, Leonard Euler and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.-Life:Guillaume was born in Paris, France. His father was a lawyer from...

in 1702.
Gay-Lussac's law
Gay-Lussac's law
The expression Gay-Lussac's law is used for each of the two relationships named after the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and which concern the properties of gases, though it is more usually applied to his law of combining volumes, the first listed here...

(1802)

Birth of thermodynamics as a modern science

At its origins, thermodynamics was the study of engines. A precursor of the engine was designed by the German scientist Otto von Guericke

Otto von Guericke

Otto von Guericke was a German scientist, inventor, and politician...

who, in 1650, designed and built the world's first vacuum pump

Vacuum pump

A vacuum pump is a device that removes gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum. The first vacuum pump was invented in 1650 by Otto von Guericke.- Types :Pumps can be broadly categorized according to three techniques:...

and created the world's first ever vacuum

Vacuum

known as the Magdeburg hemispheres

Magdeburg hemispheres

The Magdeburg hemispheres are a pair of large copper hemispheres with mating rims. When the rims were sealed with grease and the air was pumped out, the sphere contained a vacuum and could not be pulled apart by teams of horses...

. He was driven to make a vacuum in order to disprove Aristotle

Aristotle

's long-held supposition that 'Nature abhors a vacuum'

Horror vacui (physics)

In physics horror vacui, or plenism, is a theory first proposed by Aristotle in the Fourth book of Physics that nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty. The theory was widely accepted for a long time and supported by...

.

Shortly thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

had learned of Guericke's designs and in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...

, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation: P.V=constant. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later. Therefore Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring. Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive his law, which led shortly later to the ideal gas law

Ideal gas law

The ideal gas law is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation to the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first stated by Émile Clapeyron in 1834 as a combination of Boyle's law and Charles's law...

. But, already before the establishment of the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's named Denis Papin

Denis Papin

Denis Papin was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine and of the pressure cooker.-Life in France:...

built in 1679 a bone digester, which is a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a high pressure is generated.

Later designs implemented a steam release valve to keep the machine from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine. He did not however follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin’s designs, engineer Thomas Savery

Thomas Savery

Thomas Savery was an English inventor, born at Shilstone, a manor house near Modbury, Devon, England.-Career:Savery became a military engineer, rising to the rank of Captain by 1702, and spent his free time performing experiments in mechanics...

built the first engine. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time. One such scientist was Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was a French military engineer who, in his 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, gave the first successful theoretical account of heat engines, now known as the Carnot cycle, thereby laying the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics...

, the “father of thermodynamics”, who in 1824 published “Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire
Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire
In 1824, French physicist Sadi Carnot published the book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power....

”, a discourse on heat, power, and engine efficiency. This marks the start of thermodynamics as a modern science.

Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of the Savery Engine

Steam engine

, horses were used to power pulleys, attached to buckets, which lifted water out of flooded salt mines in England. In the years to follow, more variations of steam engines were built, such as the Newcomen Engine

Newcomen steam engine

The atmospheric engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, today referred to as a Newcomen steam engine , was the first practical device to harness the power of steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines,...

, and later the Watt Engine

Watt steam engine

The Watt steam engine was the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive the piston helped by a partial vacuum...

. In time, these early engines would eventually be utilized in place of horses. Thus, each engine began to be associated with a certain amount of "horse power" depending upon how many horses it had replaced. The main problem with these first engines was that they were slow and clumsy, converting less than 2% of the input fuel

Fuel

Fuel is any material that stores energy that can later be extracted to perform mechanical work in a controlled manner. Most fuels used by humans undergo combustion, a redox reaction in which a combustible substance releases energy after it ignites and reacts with the oxygen in the air...

into useful work. In other words, large quantities of coal (or wood) had to be burned to yield only a small fraction of work output. Hence the need for a new science of engine dynamics

Dynamics (mechanics)

In the field of physics, the study of the causes of motion and changes in motion is dynamics. In other words the study of forces and why objects are in motion. Dynamics includes the study of the effect of torques on motion...

was born.

Most cite Sadi Carnot’s

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

1824 paper Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire as the starting point for thermodynamics as a modern science. Carnot defined "motive power" to be the expression of the useful effect that a motor is capable of producing. Herein, Carnot introduced us to the first modern day definition of "work

Mechanical work

In physics, work is a scalar quantity that can be described as the product of a force times the distance through which it acts, and it is called the work of the force. Only the component of a force in the direction of the movement of its point of application does work...

": weight lifted through a height. The desire to understand, via formulation, this useful effect in relation to "work" is at the core of all modern day thermodynamics.

In 1843, James Joule experimentally found the mechanical equivalent of heat

Mechanical equivalent of heat

In the history of science, the mechanical equivalent of heat was a concept that had an important part in the development and acceptance of the conservation of energy and the establishment of the science of thermodynamics in the 19th century....

. In 1845, Joule reported his best-known experiment, involving the use of a falling weight to spin a paddle-wheel in an barrel of water, which allowed him to estimate a mechanical equivalent of heat of 819 ft·lbf/Btu (4.41 J/cal). This led to the theory of conservation of energy and explained why heat can do a work.

The name "thermodynamics," however, did not arrive until some twenty-five years later when, in 1849, the British mathematician and physicist William Thomson

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

(Lord Kelvin) coined the term thermodynamics in a paper on the efficiency of steam engines.

In 1850, the famed mathematical physicist Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius , was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle, he put the theory of heat on a truer and sounder basis...

defined the term entropy S to be the heat lost or turned into waste, stemming from the Greek word entrepein meaning to turn.
In association with Clausius, in 1871, a Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...

formulated a new branch of thermodynamics called Statistical Thermodynamics, which functions to analyze large numbers of particles at equilibrium

Thermodynamic equilibrium

In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic system is said to be in thermodynamic equilibrium when it is in thermal equilibrium, mechanical equilibrium, radiative equilibrium, and chemical equilibrium. The word equilibrium means a state of balance...

, i.e., systems where no changes are occurring, such that only their average properties as temperature T, pressure P, and volume V become important.

Soon thereafter, in 1875, the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...

formulated a precise connection between entropy S and molecular motion:

being defined in terms of the number of possible states [W] such motion could occupy, where k is the Boltzmann's constant.

The following year, 1876, was a seminal point in the development of human thought. During this essential period, chemical engineer Willard Gibbs, the first person in America to be awarded a PhD in engineering (Yale), published an obscure 300-page paper titled: On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, wherein he formulated one grand equality, the Gibbs free energy

Gibbs free energy

In thermodynamics, the Gibbs free energy is a thermodynamic potential that measures the "useful" or process-initiating work obtainable from a thermodynamic system at a constant temperature and pressure...

equation, which gives a measure the amount of "useful work" attainable in reacting systems. Gibbs also originated the concept we now know as enthalpy

Enthalpy

Enthalpy is a measure of the total energy of a thermodynamic system. It includes the internal energy, which is the energy required to create a system, and the amount of energy required to make room for it by displacing its environment and establishing its volume and pressure.Enthalpy is a...

H, calling it "a heat function for constant pressure".
The modern word enthalpy would be coined many years later by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He pioneered refrigeration techniques, and he explored how materials behaved when cooled to nearly absolute zero. He was the first to liquify helium...

,
who based it on the Greek word enthalpein meaning to warm.

Building on these foundations, those as Lars Onsager

Lars Onsager

Lars Onsager was a Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University....

, Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...

, and Ilya Prigogine

Ilya Prigogine

Ilya, Viscount Prigogine was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.-Biography :...

, and others, functioned to bring these engine "concepts" into the thoroughfare of almost every modern-day branch of science.

Kinetic theory

The idea that heat

Heat

is a form of motion

Motion (physics)

In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time. Change in action is the result of an unbalanced force. Motion is typically described in terms of velocity, acceleration, displacement and time . An object's velocity cannot change unless it is acted upon by a force, as...

is perhaps an ancient one and is certainly discussed by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

in 1620 in his Novum Organum. The first written scientific reflection on the microscopic nature of heat is probably to be found in a work by Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art,...

, in which he wrote:

"(..) movement should not be denied based on the fact it is not seen. Who would deny that the leaves of trees move when rustled by a wind, despite it being unobservable from large distances? Just as in this case motion remains hidden due to perspective, it remains hidden in warm bodies due to the extremely small sizes of the moving particles. In both cases, the viewing angle is so small that neither the object nor their movement can be seen."

During the same years, Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli was a Dutch-Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics...

published his book Hydrodynamics (1738), in which he derived an equation for the pressure of a gas considering the collisions of its atoms with the walls of a container. He proves that this pressure is two thirds the average kinetic energy of the gas in a unit volume. Bernoulli's ideas, however, made little impact on the dominant caloric culture. Bernoulli made a connection with Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....

's vis viva
Vis viva
In the history of science, vis viva is an obsolete scientific theory that served as an elementary and limited early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy...

principle, an early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy

Conservation of energy

The nineteenth century law of conservation of energy is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. The total energy is said to be conserved over time...

, and the two theories became intimately entwined throughout their history. Though Benjamin Thompson suggested that heat was a form of motion as a result of his experiments in 1798, no attempt was made to reconcile theoretical and experimental approaches, and it is unlikely that he was thinking of the vis viva principle.

John Herapath

John Herapath

John Herapath was an English physicist who gave a partial account of the kinetic theory of gases in 1820 though it was neglected by the scientific community at the time....

later independently formulated a kinetic theory in 1820, but mistakenly associated temperature with momentum

Momentum

In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...

rather than vis viva or kinetic energy

Kinetic energy

The kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes...

. His work ultimately failed peer review

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

and was neglected. John James Waterston

John James Waterston

John James Waterston was a Scottish physicist, a neglected pioneer of the kinetic theory of gases.-Early life:Waterston's father, George, was an Edinburgh sealing wax manufacturer and stationer, a relative of the Sandeman family Robert and his brother, George...

in 1843 provided a largely accurate account, again independently, but his work received the same reception, failing peer review even from someone as well-disposed to the kinetic principle as Davy.

Further progress in kinetic theory started only in the middle of the 19th century, with the works of Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Clausius

, James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell

, and Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...

. In his 1857 work On the nature of the motion called heat, Clausius for the first time clearly states that heat is the average kinetic energy of molecules. This interested Maxwell, who in 1859 derived the momentum distribution later named after him. Boltzmann subsequently generalized his distribution for the case of gases in external fields.

Boltzmann is perhaps the most significant contributor to kinetic theory, as he introduced many of the fundamental concepts in the theory. Besides the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution mentioned above, he also associated the kinetic energy of particles with their degrees of freedom

Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry)

A degree of freedom is an independent physical parameter, often called a dimension, in the formal description of the state of a physical system...

. The Boltzmann equation

Boltzmann equation

The Boltzmann equation, also often known as the Boltzmann transport equation, devised by Ludwig Boltzmann, describes the statistical distribution of one particle in rarefied gas...

for the distribution function of a gas in non-equilibrium states is still the most effective equation for studying transport phenomena in gases and metals. By introducing the concept of thermodynamic probability

Statistical mechanics

Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...

as the number of microstates corresponding to the current macrostate, he showed that its logarithm is proportional to entropy.

Branches of

The following list gives a rough outline as to when the major branches of thermodynamics came into inception:

Thermochemistry
Thermochemistry
Thermochemistry is the study of the energy and heat associated with chemical reactions and/or physical transformations. A reaction may release or absorb energy, and a phase change may do the same, such as in melting and boiling. Thermochemistry focuses on these energy changes, particularly on the...

- 1780s
Classical thermodynamics - 1824
Chemical thermodynamics
Chemical thermodynamics
Chemical thermodynamics is the study of the interrelation of heat and work with chemical reactions or with physical changes of state within the confines of the laws of thermodynamics...

- 1876
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...

- c. 1880s
Equilibrium thermodynamics
Equilibrium thermodynamics
Equilibrium Thermodynamics is the systematic study of transformations of matter and energy in systems as they approach equilibrium. The word equilibrium implies a state of balance. Equilibrium thermodynamics, in origins, derives from analysis of the Carnot cycle. Here, typically a system, as...
Engineering thermodynamics
Chemical engineering thermodynamics - c. 1940s
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...

- 1941
Small systems thermodynamics - 1960s
Biological thermodynamics
Biological thermodynamics
Biological thermodynamics is a phrase that is sometimes used to refer to bioenergetics, the study of energy transformation in the biological sciences...

- 1957
Ecosystem thermodynamics - 1959
Relativistic thermodynamics - 1965
Quantum thermodynamics
Quantum thermodynamics
In the physical sciences, quantum thermodynamics is the study of heat and work dynamics in quantum systems. Approximately, quantum thermodynamics attempts to combine thermodynamics and quantum mechanics into a coherent whole. The essential point at which "quantum mechanics" began was when, in...

- 1968
Black hole thermodynamics
Black hole thermodynamics
In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons...

- c. 1970s
Geological thermodynamics - c. 1970s
Biological evolution thermodynamics - 1978
Geochemical thermodynamics - c. 1980s
Atmospheric thermodynamics
Atmospheric thermodynamics
Atmospheric thermodynamics is the study of heat to work transformations in the earth’s atmospheric system in relation to weather or climate...

- c. 1980s
Natural systems thermodynamics - 1990s
Supramolecular thermodynamics - 1990s
Earthquake thermodynamics - 2000
Drug-receptor thermodynamics - 2001
Pharmaceutical systems thermodynamics – 2002

Ideas from thermodynamics have also been applied in other fields, for example:

Thermoeconomics
Thermoeconomics
Thermoeconomics, also referred to as biophysical economics, is a school of heterodox economics that applies the laws of thermodynamics to economic theory. The term "thermoeconomics" was coined in 1962 by American engineer Myron Tribus, and developed by the statistician and economist Nicholas...

- c. 1970s

Entropy and the second law

Even though he was working with the caloric theory, Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

in 1824 suggested that some of the caloric available for generating useful work is lost in any real process. In March 1851, while grappling to come to terms with the work of James Prescott Joule

James Prescott Joule

, Lord Kelvin started to speculate that there was an inevitable loss of useful heat in all processes. The idea was framed even more dramatically by Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...

in 1854, giving birth to the spectre of the heat death of the universe

Heat death of the universe

The heat death of the universe is a suggested ultimate fate of the universe, in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain motion or life. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that...

.

In 1854, William John Macquorn Rankine

William John Macquorn Rankine

William John Macquorn Rankine was a Scottish civil engineer, physicist and mathematician. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson , to the science of thermodynamics....

started to make use in calculation of what he called his thermodynamic function. This has subsequently been shown to be identical to the concept of entropy

Entropy

Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...

formulated by Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Clausius

in 1865. Clausius used the concept to develop his classic statement of the second law of thermodynamics

Second law of thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...

the same year.

Heat transfer

The phenomenon of heat conduction

Heat conduction

In heat transfer, conduction is a mode of transfer of energy within and between bodies of matter, due to a temperature gradient. Conduction means collisional and diffusive transfer of kinetic energy of particles of ponderable matter . Conduction takes place in all forms of ponderable matter, viz....

is immediately grasped in everyday life. In 1701, Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

published his law of cooling. However, in the 17th century, it came to be believed that all materials had an identical conductivity and that differences in sensation arose from their different heat capacities

Heat capacity

Heat capacity , or thermal capacity, is the measurable physical quantity that characterizes the amount of heat required to change a substance's temperature by a given amount...

.

Suggestions that this might not be the case came from the new science of electricity

Electricity

Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

in which it was easily apparent that some materials were good electrical conductors while others were effective insulators. Jan Ingen-Housz in 1785-9 made some of the earliest measurements, as did Benjamin Thompson during the same period.

The fact that warm air rises and the importance of the phenomenon to meteorology was first realised by Edmund Halley in 1686. Sir John Leslie

John Leslie (physicist)

Sir John Leslie was a Scottish mathematician and physicist best remembered for his research into heat.Leslie gave the first modern account of capillary action in 1802 and froze water using an air-pump in 1810, the first artificial production of ice.In 1804, he experimented with radiant heat using...

observed that the cooling effect of a stream of air increased with its speed

Speed

In kinematics, the speed of an object is the magnitude of its velocity ; it is thus a scalar quantity. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance traveled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as...

, in 1804.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Carl Wilhelm Scheele was a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit...

distinguished heat transfer by thermal radiation

Thermal radiation

Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of charged particles in matter. All matter with a temperature greater than absolute zero emits thermal radiation....

(radiant heat) from that by convection and conduction in 1777. In 1791, Pierre Prévost

Pierre Prévost

Pierre Prévost was a Swiss philosopher and physicist. In he showed that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are.-Life:...

showed that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are. In 1804, Leslie observed that a matt black surface radiates heat more effectively than a polished surface, suggesting the importance of black body radiation. Though it had become to be suspected even from Scheele's work, in 1831 Macedonio Melloni

Macedonio Melloni

Macedonio Melloni was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light.-Life:...

demonstrated that black body radiation could be reflected

Reflection (physics)

Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two differentmedia so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves...

, refracted

Refraction

Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. It is essentially a surface phenomenon . The phenomenon is mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy. The proper explanation would be that due to change of medium, the phase velocity of the wave is changed...

and polarised in the same way as light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

.

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell

's 1862 insight that both light and radiant heat were forms of electromagnetic wave led to the start of the quantitative

Quantitative property

A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured with a number. Measurements of any particular quantitative property are expressed as a specific quantity, referred to as a unit, multiplied by a number. Examples of physical quantities are distance,...

analysis of thermal radiation. In 1879, Jožef Stefan observed that the total radiant flux

Radiant flux

In radiometry, radiant flux or radiant power is the measure of the total power of electromagnetic radiation...

from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature and stated the Stefan–Boltzmann law. The law was derived theoretically by Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...

in 1884.

Cryogenics

In 1702 Guillaume Amontons

Guillaume Amontons

Guillaume Amontons was a French scientific instrument inventor and physicist. He was one of the pioneers in tribology, apart from Leonardo da Vinci, John Theophilus Desaguliers, Leonard Euler and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.-Life:Guillaume was born in Paris, France. His father was a lawyer from...

introduced the concept of absolute zero

Absolute zero

Absolute zero is the theoretical temperature at which entropy reaches its minimum value. The laws of thermodynamics state that absolute zero cannot be reached using only thermodynamic means....

based on observations of gas

Gas

Gas is one of the three classical states of matter . Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons...

es. In 1810, Sir John Leslie froze water to ice artificially. The idea of absolute zero was generalised in 1848 by Lord Kelvin. In 1906, Walther Nernst

Walther Nernst

Walther Hermann Nernst FRS was a German physical chemist and physicist who is known for his theories behind the calculation of chemical affinity as embodied in the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry...

stated the third law of thermodynamics

Third law of thermodynamics

The third law of thermodynamics is a statistical law of nature regarding entropy:For other materials, the residual entropy is not necessarily zero, although it is always zero for a perfect crystal in which there is only one possible ground state.-History:...

External links

History of Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics - Timeline (1575 to 1980) @ Hyperjeff.net
History of Thermodynamics - University of Waterloo
Thermodynamic History Notes - WolframScience.com
Brief History of Thermodynamics - Berkeley [PDF]
History of Thermodynamics - ThermodynamicStudy.net
Historical Background of Thermodynamics - Carnegie-Mellon University
History of Thermodynamics - In Pictures

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Contributions from ancient and medieval times

Transition from chemistry to thermochemistry

Phenomenological thermodynamics

Birth of thermodynamics as a modern science

Kinetic theory

Branches of

Entropy and the second law

Heat transfer

Cryogenics

See also

External links