Abstract
MEH surmised work production to be resulting from the consumption of heat . Carnot demonstrated that work production is derived from the transfer of heat. Kelvin and Clausius were able to synthesize the two competing theories into one theory by incorporating Carnot’s theory to accord for what was meant by “consumption”. This chapter covers Carnot’s theory of heat and how Kelvin incorporated Carnot’s theory into the MTH in terms of absolute thermodynamic temperature , the Carnot–Kelvin formula , and the concept of available energy and the energy principle , which is Kelvin’s version of the second law of thermodynamics. That is, Kelvin formulated a thermodynamics theory in terms of energy: in terms of energy conservation and energy availability, as well as the universality in the direction of energy form transformation.
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Notes
- 1.
It has been mentioned in Sect. 1.3 and will be suggested repeatedly that irreversibility and “away from equilibrium existence” are synonymous: there is no irreversibility if the world is at equilibrium; it is also impossible to be away from equilibrium without any manifestation of irreversibility.
- 2.
Frictional is a better term here than dissipative as Kelvin used “dissipative” to represent both dispersal kinds and frictional kinds. In the following, I’ll follow Kelvin using dissipative processes as general irreversible processes: dispersal and frictional processes as two specific kinds of irreversibility.
- 3.
Thought experiments (theoretically constructed experiments) are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things. We need only to list a few of the well-known thought experiments to be reminded of their enormous influence and importance in the sciences: Galileo’s tower of Pisa, Newton’s bucket, Maxwell’s demon, Einstein’s elevator, Heisenberg’s gamma-ray microscope, Schrödinger’s cat and, of course, Carnot’s cycle.
- 4.
In the 1848 paper, he had this to say: “the conversion of heat (or caloric) into mechanical effect is probably impossible*, certainly undiscovered.” In the *footnote, however, Kelvin acknowledged the contrary opinion advocated by Joule, and signaled the move to accept the MEH that he would take in a very short time (1851).
- 5.
In the case of a steady-state general system, it may be noted that the entropy flowing out of the system is always larger than the entropy flowing into the system as a result of entropy production. See Chap. 6 for more details.
- 6.
The treatment of the second law advocated here is closest to that of Planck, which stresses the centrality of the second law and the energetic/entropic understanding of heat. A distinction is made between MEH (in its pure sense, not how Joule and Kelvin interpreted it as discussed in Sect. 4.7) and the “reductive” mechanical theory of heat . In the specific treatment of Q (heat exchange, not heat in the general inclusive sense) in Sects. 3.2 and 3.3 in the above, however, I followed Helmholtz and Born by adopting the “mechanical” definition of Q—which is different from Planck, who considers heat to be a primitive concept and elects to stay away from the reductive mechanical theory of heat approach. For clarity, it is noted again that the use of the “mechanical” definition of Q in Sect. 3.3 does not require the full acceptance of the reductive mechanical theory of heat.
- 7.
- 8.
Efficient cause may be characterized by the description,
Physics knows nothing of causation except that it is the invariable and unconditional sequence of one event upon another:
July does not cause August, though it invariably precedes it.
That is, cause-and-effect in science is characterized by constant conjunction (of force and acceleration, e.g.,) and invariable sequence (July and August, e.g.,).
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Wang, LS. (2020). Carnot’s Theory of Heat, and Kelvin’s Adoption of Which in Terms of Energy. In: A Treatise of Heat and Energy. Mechanical Engineering Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05746-6_4
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