![Sample our Engineering & Technology journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5933/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Engineering-Tech.jpg"})
Abstract
Based on the idea that a scientific journal is also an “agora” (Greek: market place) for the exchange of ideas and scientific concepts, the history of thermodynamics between 1800 and 1910 as documented in the Philosophical Magazine Archives is uncovered. Famous scientists such as Joule, Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Clausius, Maxwell or Boltzmann shared this forum. Not always in the most friendly manner. It is interesting to find out, how difficult it was to describe in a scientific (mathematical) language a phenomenon like “heat”, to see, how long it took to arrive at one of the fundamental principles in physics: entropy. Scientific progress started from the simple rule of Boyle and Mariotte dating from the late eighteenth century and arrived in the twentieth century with the concept of probabilities. Thermodynamics was the driving intellectual force behind the industrial revolution, behind the enormous social changes caused by this revolution. The history of thermodynamics is a fascinating story, which also gives insights into the mechanism that seem to govern science.
Notes
Notes
1. all quotations are shown in italics.
2. Virial Theorem: where
is the time average over the total kinetic energy of a stable system consisting of
particels located at
and the
are the forces acting on each of the particles.
3. The product of two incidences
and
is an incidence
where
as well as
occur. If the incidences
and
are “statistically” independent, i.e. the probability of
is independent of the probability of
, then
Similar definitions apply for probability densities.
4. Taking for matters of simplicityin Equation () and using Clausius expression for the kinetic energy, Equation (), is probably the best way to illustrate Raleigh’s proof: