Who wrote the laws of thermodynamics?
778700#21
Circa 1797, Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson) showed that endless mechanical action can generate indefinitely large amounts of heat from a fixed amount of working substance thus challenging the caloric theory of heat, which held that there would be a finite amount of caloric heat/energy in a fixed amount of working substance. The first established thermodynamic principle, which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics, was formulated by Sadi Carnot in 1824. By 1860, as formalized in the works of those such as Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, two established principles of thermodynamics had evolved, the first principle and the second principle, later restated as thermodynamic laws. By 1873, for example, thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, in his memoir "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids", clearly stated the first two absolute laws of thermodynamics. Some textbooks throughout the 20th century have numbered the laws differently. In some fields removed from chemistry, the second law was considered to deal with the efficiency of heat engines only, whereas what was called the third law dealt with entropy increases. Directly defining zero points for entropy calculations was not considered to be a law. Gradually, this separation was combined into the second law and the modern third law was widely adopted.
Laws of thermodynamics
133017#9
The second law of thermodynamics may be expressed in many specific ways, the most prominent classical statements being the statement by Rudolf Clausius (1854), the statement by Lord Kelvin (1851), and the statement in axiomatic thermodynamics by Constantin Carathéodory (1909). These statements cast the law in general physical terms citing the impossibility of certain processes. The Clausius and the Kelvin statements have been shown to be equivalent.
Second law of thermodynamics
262861#22
According to Arnold Sommerfeld, Ralph H. Fowler invented the title 'the zeroth law of thermodynamics' when he was discussing the 1935 text of Saha and Srivastava. They write on page 1 that "every physical quantity must be measurable in numerical terms". They presume that temperature is a physical quantity and then deduce the statement "If a body A is in temperature equilibrium with two bodies B and C, then B and C themselves will be in temperature equilibrium with each other". They then in a self-standing paragraph italicize as if to state their basic postulate: ""Any of the physical properties of A which change with the application of heat may be observed and utilised for the measurement of temperature."" They do not themselves here use the term 'zeroth law of thermodynamics'. There are very many statements of these physical ideas in the physics literature long before this text, in very similar language. What was new here was just the label 'zeroth law of thermodynamics'. Fowler, with co-author Edward A. Guggenheim, wrote of the zeroth law as follows:
Zeroth law of thermodynamics
133017#24
In 1926, Max Planck wrote an important paper on the basics of thermodynamics. He indicated the principle
Second law of thermodynamics
133017#10
The historical origin of the second law of thermodynamics was in Carnot's principle. It refers to a cycle of a Carnot heat engine, fictively operated in the limiting mode of extreme slowness known as quasi-static, so that the heat and work transfers are between subsystems that are always in their own internal states of thermodynamic equilibrium. The Carnot engine is an idealized device of special interest to engineers who are concerned with the efficiency of heat engines. Carnot's principle was recognized by Carnot at a time when the caloric theory of heat was seriously considered, before the recognition of the first law of thermodynamics, and before the mathematical expression of the concept of entropy. Interpreted in the light of the first law, it is physically equivalent to the second law of thermodynamics, and remains valid today. It states
Second law of thermodynamics
11695358#3
Gibbs first contributed to mathematical physics with two papers published in 1873 in the "Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences" on "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids," and "Method of Geometrical Representation of the Thermodynamic Properties of Substances by means of Surfaces." His subsequent and most important publication was "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" (in two parts, 1876 and 1878). In this monumental, densely woven, 300-page treatise, the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, the fundamental thermodynamic relation, are applied to the predication and quantification of thermodynamic reaction tendencies in any thermodynamic system in a visual, three-dimensional graphical language of Lagrangian calculus and phase transitions, among others. As stated by Henri Louis Le Chatelier, it "founded a new department of chemical science that is becoming comparable in importance to that created by Lavoisier." This work was translated into German by W. Ostwald (who styled its author the "founder of chemical energetics") in 1891 and into French by H. le Chatelier in 1899.
On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances
296639#7
British physicist Sir Alfred Brian Pippard wrote, "There is thus no justification for the view, often glibly repeated, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations repeatedly occur, but never violations of any serious magnitude. On the contrary, no evidence has ever been presented that the Second Law breaks down under any circumstances." However, there are a number of paradoxes regarding violation of the second law of thermodynamics, one of them due to the Poincaré recurrence theorem.
Arrow of time
262861#21
These ideas may be regarded as helping to clarify the physical meaning of the usual statement of the zeroth law of thermodynamics. It is the opinion of Lieb and Yngvason (1999) that the derivation from statistical mechanics of the law of entropy increase is a goal that has so far eluded the deepest thinkers. Thus the idea remains open to consideration that the existence of heat and temperature are needed as coherent primitive concepts for thermodynamics, as expressed, for example, by Maxwell and Planck. On the other hand, Planck in 1926 clarified how the second law can be stated without reference to heat or temperature, by referring to the irreversible and universal nature of friction in natural thermodynamic processes.
Zeroth law of thermodynamics
166404#4
In 1840, Germain Hess stated a conservation law for the so-called 'heat of reaction' for chemical reactions. His law was later recognized as a consequence of the first law of thermodynamics, but Hess's statement was not explicitly concerned with the relation between energy exchanges by heat and work.
First law of thermodynamics
7935247#2
In 1965, he and Joseph Keenan published their textbook "Principles of General Thermodynamics", which restates the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the existence of stable equilibrium states. Their formulation of the second law of thermodynamics states that:
George N. Hatsopoulos