A New Perspective on Thermodynamics
Dr. Bernard H. Lavenda has written A New Perspective on Thermodynamics to combine an old look at thermodynamics with a new foundation. The book presents a historical perspective, which unravels the current presentation of thermodynamics found in standard
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Bernard H. Lavenda
A New Perspective on Thermodynamics
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Bernard H. Lavenda Universit`a Camerino Via del Bastione, 2 62032 Camerino Italy [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-1429-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-1430-9 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1430-9 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940574 c Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Ethan and Ronit
Preface
More than to any other single individual, thermodynamics owes its creation to Nicolas-L´eonard-Sadi Carnot. Sadi, the son of the “great Carnot” Lazare, was heavily influenced by his father. Not only was Lazare Minister of War during Napoleon’s consulate, he was a respected mathematician and engineer in his own right. Mathematically, Lazare can lay claim to the definition of the cross ratio, a projective invariant of four points. Lazare was also interested in how machines operated, emphasizing the roles of work and “vis viva,” or living force, which was later to be associated with the kinetic energy. He arrived at a dynamical theory that machines in order to operate at maximum efficiency should avoid “any impact or sudden change.” This was the heritage he left to his son Sadi. The mechanics of Newton, in his Principia, was more than a century old. It dealt with the mechanics of conservative systems in which there was no room for processes involving heat and friction. Such processes would ruin the time reversibility of mechanical laws, which could no longer be derived by minimizing the difference between kinetic and potential energies. When Sadi wrote his only scientific work in 1824, there were no laws governing the mechanical effects of heat. In fact, caloric theory was still in vogue, which treated heat as an imponderable fluid that was conserved. Although this interpretation led naturally to the interpretation of latent and specific heats, it was at a loss to account for phenomena related to the transport of heat, like that which occurs in steam engines. Carnot’s great achievement was the recognition that motive power is due to the passage of heat from a hotter to a colder body. He used caloric theory in analogy with the drop in height of water used to turn a water-wheel. Water is conserve
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