Through additional understanding of the motivation and thinking process posed by revolutionary scientists that shaped modern thermodynamics, we hope to achieve a more approachable introduction to concepts of thermodynamics that many may consider challenging.
This website was created by Jennifer Kao with the guidance of Professor Prado and financial support from Small Grants - UC Davis. All stories are presented in the Einstein's Fridge book by Paul Sen. The pictures were drawn by Jennifer Kao and were inspired by the stories presented in the book. We hope that thermodynamics educators find it useful to use this website in their thermodynamics classes.
From the Very Beginning...
The foundational laws that dictate the rein of Thermodynamics
First Law
1818-1889
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Experiments with batteries, electromagnets
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Heat and Work can be converted into each other with electricity as intermediate
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Suspicious of the Caloric Theory
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Paper was rejected
Motivation: beer
Question: Is there another source of motive power than heat?
1837-1894
Motivation: Catch up with Britain's Industrial Revolution
Question: What would be the greatest amount of power one could produce from a given amount of heat?
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Imagined an ideal Engine
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Defined Motive Power: useful work that can be obtained from heat
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Dependent on concepts of Caloric Theory: tiny substances released during combustion
Conclusion: Must have hot and cold to produce work
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New experiments with beer fermentation vessels
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Heat and work can be converted into each other with electricity as an intermediate
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Presented to a small audience of physicists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science since the chemists were too busy for his lecture
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William Thomson was in the audience
Published Reflections on The Motive Power of Fire paper at his own expense
Hermann Helmholtz
1818-1889
Motivation: disproof that animals could create some heat without consuming any food or fuel
Published the book Conservation of Kraft (aka energy)
William Thomson
Motivation: Carnot and Joule's ideas
1824-1907
Absolute Temperature Scale
Published An Account of Carnot's Theory of the Motive Power of Heat paper
Introduced the idea of potential energy
Conclusion: Can't solve the conflict between Carnot and Joule's ideas
Conclusion: All forms of energy can be turned into each other
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Second Law
Rudolf Clausius
Motivation: asked to scrutinize Helmholtz book in a seminar taken as undergraduate student
1822-1888
Identified internal energy
Defined the concept of entropy
Statements updated
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The energy of the universe is constant
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The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum
Official Birth of a new field of science:
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Though heat and work can be converted into each other at the fixed "exchange" rate that Joule had discovered, the total amount of heat plus work remains the same.
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Heat never spontaneously flow from cold to hot.
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Published the paper on the Moving Force of Heat reconciling the ideas of Joule and Carnot
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Proved that ideal engines depend only on the T of the sink and the furnace
1700-1782
Motivation: Measure Blood Pressure
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Kinetic theory of gases
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(The Nature of the Motion we call Heat)
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Published Hydrodynamica book
The Two Principles that Ruled Us all
Behavior of living cells
Why we must eat and breathe
Preservation of Vaccines
Electricity Reliability
Extending/ Preservation of Organs for Organ Transplants
Behavior of black holes
Energy efficiency of Jet Engines
Limits of Computation
Cost efficacy of energy and fuel
Food preservatives
Why is this important?
Question: Why do some gases do not liquefy at high pressures?
1873-1912
Experiments with CO2 identified the critical point
James Clerk Maxwell
1831-1879
Motivation: Inspired by Clausius' paper
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Applied the principle of bell curve to Clausius' ideas
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Defined T in microscopic scale
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Published Illustrations of the Dynamic Theory of Gases
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Organized seminal mathematical analysis of electromagnetism
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Invention of radio
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Reveal the true nature of light
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Inspired Einstein's work on relativity
Johannes Diderik Van Der Waals
1837-1923
Motivation: determine the molecular pressure in Laplace's theory of capillarity
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Principle of corresponding states
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Corroborated the existence of the critical point
Ludwig Boltzmann
1844-1906
Question:" Why does the entropy of the universe always increase
Motivation: teaching in Austria with no heating
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Developed the first EOS for real gases based on Clausius and Maxwell's work
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Inspired the development of other EOS to describe the behavior of real materials
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Used Statistics to explain the second law of Thermodynamics
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S=klnw
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Published Further Studies in the Thermal Equilibrium of Gas Molecules
Carl Linde
1842-1934
Motivation: Beer
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Asked by Guinness to supply liquid CO2 to improve their beer's foam head
Inspired Linde to study liquefaction in large scale
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Used charts to improve the efficiency of refrigerators
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Created more efficient ice machines to sell to breweries
Josiah Willard Gibbs
1839-1903
Question: What are the consequences of thermodynamics law?
Motivation 1: Civil War (North's victory due to superior steam technologies
Motivation 2: Help beginners to understand entropy
Showed that thermodynamics laws drive all chemical reactions
Gibb's free energy
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Used by engineers who design power stations
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Allow engineers to maximize power from heat while keeping it safe
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Design and improved the efficiency of refrigerators
Enabled industrial production of oxygen and nitrogen gas
Albert Einstein
1879-1955
"It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced... it will never be overthrown"
Used Boltzmann's definition of entropy to explain the behavior of light
Emmy Noether
1882-1935
Motivation: asked to analyze Einstein's work
Mathematically defined why the first law of thermodynamics is true through definition of symmetry
Leo Szilard
Motivation: Einstein read a newspaper account of one Berlin family who died from the fumes emanating from their malfunctioning refrigerator
1898-1964
Einstein's former student
Designed, patented, and marketed a refrigerator
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Linked information, energy, and entropy
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To process bit ( information), the system must dissipate heat
Claude Shannon
1916-2001
Question 1: what is a message?
Question 2: how long or short it needs to be to communicate an idea?
Question 3: is there a mathematical way to measure the size of a piece of information?
Used by information companies (e.g. Netflix and YouTube) to hold and distribute huge files of video information
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Size of a piece of information:
Entropy of any given system:
Landauer and Bennet
1927-1999 1943-present
Motivation: find general laws that govern all information processing
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Deduced thermodynamic value of a 'bit'
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Landauer Limit: erasing a "bit" will require an equal amount of heat dissipation
Extended the first law
