2
Calorimetry and the Caloric Theory
of Heat, the Measurement of Heat
Abstract
Joseph Black distinguished between the quantity of heat in a body and its
intensity, or temperature, which was introduced in Chap. 1. This chapter
introduces calorimetry, the measurement of the quantity of heat, and the
contemporary theory of heat, the caloric theory of heat. Development of
calorimetry and the caloric theory was the beginning of the quantitative study of
heat, and the important stepping stone toward the mechanical theory of heat, the
idea that heat is a form of energy.
Keywords
Calorimetry Á Caloric theory of heat Á Sensible heat Á Latent heat Á Calorie Á Heat
capacity at constant volume Á Heat capacity at constant pressure Á Adiabatic
heating
2.1 Theories of Heat
“Joseph Black died quietly in his chair on November 26, 1799, with a cup of tea
balanced in his lap. Five years earlier, Antoine Lavoisier’s head had been publicly
removed by the French Revolutionary Tribunal. These two men defined our
understanding of heat phenomena on the eve of the 19th century…” noted the
mechanical engineer Lienhard [1].
In 1789, Lavoisier published a treatise on chemistry which, among other things,
recognized that the newly discovered chemical element of oxygen was involved in
combustion processes rather than the hypothetical phlogiston (one issue of the
phlogiston theory was phlogiston’s weight: the necessity of entertaining phlogiston’s negative weight). And, proposed instead the hypothesis of heat (the caloric
theory of heat)—an invisible, weightless, tasteless, odorless, fluid-like
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L.-S. Wang, A Treatise of Heat and Energy, Mechanical Engineering Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05746-6_2
25
Calorimetry and the Caloric Theory
of Heat, the Measurement of Heat
Abstract
Joseph Black distinguished between the quantity of heat in a body and its
intensity, or temperature, which was introduced in Chap. 1. This chapter
introduces calorimetry, the measurement of the quantity of heat, and the
contemporary theory of heat, the caloric theory of heat. Development of
calorimetry and the caloric theory was the beginning of the quantitative study of
heat, and the important stepping stone toward the mechanical theory of heat, the
idea that heat is a form of energy.
Keywords
Calorimetry Á Caloric theory of heat Á Sensible heat Á Latent heat Á Calorie Á Heat
capacity at constant volume Á Heat capacity at constant pressure Á Adiabatic
heating
2.1 Theories of Heat
“Joseph Black died quietly in his chair on November 26, 1799, with a cup of tea
balanced in his lap. Five years earlier, Antoine Lavoisier’s head had been publicly
removed by the French Revolutionary Tribunal. These two men defined our
understanding of heat phenomena on the eve of the 19th century…” noted the
mechanical engineer Lienhard [1].
In 1789, Lavoisier published a treatise on chemistry which, among other things,
recognized that the newly discovered chemical element of oxygen was involved in
combustion processes rather than the hypothetical phlogiston (one issue of the
phlogiston theory was phlogiston’s weight: the necessity of entertaining phlogiston’s negative weight). And, proposed instead the hypothesis of heat (the caloric
theory of heat)—an invisible, weightless, tasteless, odorless, fluid-like
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L.-S. Wang, A Treatise of Heat and Energy, Mechanical Engineering Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05746-6_2
25