Book ID: CBB026567108

Thermodynamic Weirdness: From Fahrenheit to Clausius (2019)

unapi

Lemons, Don S. (Author)


The MIT Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 192 pp.
Language: English

An account of the concepts and intellectual structure of classical thermodynamics that reveals the subject's simplicity and coherence. Students of physics, chemistry, and engineering are taught classical thermodynamics through its methods―a “problems first” approach that neglects the subject's concepts and intellectual structure. In Thermodynamic Weirdness, Don Lemons fills this gap, offering a nonmathematical account of the ideas of classical thermodynamics in all its non-Newtonian “weirdness.” By emphasizing the ideas and their relationship to one another, Lemons reveals the simplicity and coherence of classical thermodynamics. Lemons presents concepts in an order that is both chronological and logical, mapping the rise and fall of ideas in such a way that the ideas that were abandoned illuminate the ideas that took their place. Selections from primary sources, including writings by Daniel Fahrenheit, Antoine Lavoisier, James Joule, and others, appear at the end of most chapters. Lemons covers the invention of temperature; heat as a form of motion or as a material fluid; Carnot's analysis of heat engines; William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and his two definitions of absolute temperature; and energy as the mechanical equivalent of heat. He explains early versions of the first and second laws of thermodynamics; entropy and the law of entropy non-decrease; the differing views of Lord Kelvin and Rudolf Clausius on the fate of the universe; the zeroth and third laws of thermodynamics; and Einstein's assessment of classical thermodynamics as “the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown.”

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB026567108/

Similar Citations

Article M. Norton Wise; (2018)
On the Stories Told by Indicator Diagrams and Carnot Diagrams (/isis/citation/CBB895444434/)

Book Yagi, Eri; Clausius, Rudolf Julius Emmanuel; (2002)
A historical approach to entropy: Collected papers of Eri Yagi and her coworkers at the occasion of her retirement (/isis/citation/CBB000301484/)

Article Rowlinson, J. S.; (2010)
James Joule, William Thomson and the Concept of a Perfect Gas (/isis/citation/CBB001022700/)

Article Montserrat, Jesús M.; Navarrho, Luis; (2000)
The atomistic view of heat in Lucretius (/isis/citation/CBB000111299/)

Article McCormmach, Russell; (1988)
Henry Cavendish on the Theory of Heat (/isis/citation/CBB000047482/)

Article Ricardo Lopes Coelho; (2014)
On the Concept of Energy: Eclecticism and Rationality (/isis/citation/CBB422366227/)

Chapter Sibum, H. Otto; (2003)
Narrating by Numbers: Keeping an Account of Early 19th-Century Laboratory Experiences (/isis/citation/CBB000330785/)

Chapter Vermeer, Leonieke; (2010)
Coping with Entropy: Utopian Reactions to the Second Law of the Thermodynamics (1860--1920) (/isis/citation/CBB001021561/)

Article Bordoni, Stafano; (2013)
Routes Towards an Abstract Thermodynamics in the Late Nineteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001320791/)

Chapter Emilio Marco Pellegrino; Elena Ghibaudi; (2016)
Clausius’ disgregation and other disappeared thermodynamic quantities: conceptual relics or meaningful epistemic junctions? (/isis/citation/CBB669244059/)

Article Cyril Verdet; (2017)
Clausius et la chaleur : le passage dissimulé de la substance à l'algèbre (/isis/citation/CBB841585275/)

Book Lewis, Christopher J. T.; (2007)
Heat and Thermodynamics: A Historical Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB000700847/)

Article Raffaele Pisano; Emilio Marco Pellegrino; Abdelkader Anakkar; Maxime Nagels; (2021)
Conceptual polymorphism of entropy into the history: extensions of the second law of thermodynamics towards statistical physics and chemistry during nineteenth–twentieth centuries (/isis/citation/CBB986765530/)

Chapter Neswald, Elizabeth; (2014)
Saving the World in the Age of Entropy: John Tyndall and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (/isis/citation/CBB001202313/)

Article Nicholas W. Best; (2016)
Lavoisier’s “Reflections on Phlogiston” II: On the Nature of Heat (/isis/citation/CBB776078651/)

Article Powers, John C.; (2014)
Measuring Fire: Herman Boerhaave and the Introduction of Thermometry into Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB001550414/)

Article R. A. Martins; A. P. B. Silva; (2021)
Joule’s Experiments on the Heat Evolved by Metallic Conductors of Electricity (/isis/citation/CBB867479977/)

Chapter Chang, Hasok; (2012)
Beyond Case-Studies: History as Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB001500246/)

Article Akeroyd, Michael; (2003)
The Lavoisier-Kirwan Debate and Approaches to the Evaluation of Theories (/isis/citation/CBB000340236/)

Authors & Contributors
Pellegrino, Emilio Marco
Nagels, Maxime
Verdet, Cyril
Anakkar, Abdelkader
Silva, A. P. B.
Ghibaudi, Elena
Concepts
Thermodynamics
Physics
Theories of heat
Chemistry
Entropy
Gases
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
Ancient
20th century
Places
Europe
England
United States
Netherlands
Greece
Germany
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment