24
perform mechanical work as the difference between the hotter reservoir and colder
reservoir grows larger.
Carnot’s unpublished notes from a few years later contain ideas that attempt to
directly connect heat to indestructible energy or motive power:
Heat is simply motive power, or rather motion which has changed form. It is a movement
among the particles of bodies. Wherever there is destruction of motive power there is, at the
same time, production of heat in quantity exactly proportional to the quantity of motive
power destroyed. Reciprocally, wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of
motive power. We can then establish the general proposition that motive power is, in quantity, invariable in nature; that it is, correctly speaking, never either produced or destroyed. It
is true that it changes form, that is, it produces sometimes one sort of motion, sometimes
another, but it is never annihilated. Carnot (1830 Trans. Thurston, R.H. 1897)
Twenty years later, this insight into the conservation of energy would be codified by
Rudolph Clausius as the first of four thermodynamics laws.
2.5.1 First Three Laws of Thermodynamics
Three laws of thermodynamics were formalized during the last half of the nineteenth and at the very start of the twentieth centuries. They establish energy’s eternality and indestructability, its one directional flow through time, and the limit of
any system to be completely devoid of it.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor
destroyed. It only transforms from one type of energy to another. Formalizing the
earlier work of Carnot, Clausius succinctly posits that “In all cases in which work is
produced by the agency of heat, a quantity of heat is consumed which is proportional to the work done; and conversely, by the expenditure of an equal quantity of
work an equal quantity of heat is produced” (Clausius, 1850, in Ganesan 2018).
The Second Law holds that energy’s capacity to do work diminishes through
time. Clausius goes beyond the work of Carnot to explain the inexorable movement
of everything toward a state of disorder. He writes that “heat can never pass from a
colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring
at the same time” (Clausius 1867). All matter and well-ordered concentrations of
energy, therefore, tends to dissipate into less organized states or lower-quality
energy (heat) and toward maximum entropy.
The Third Law establishes that entropy can only approach zero degrees. Walther
Nernst heat theorem in 1906 establishes the practical fact that the universe or any
open or closed system within it can never reach absolute zero.
It is impossible for any procedure to lead to the isotherm T = 0 in a finite number of steps
(Bailyn 1994).
2 The Energy Essential: Physical Forces Animate All Things
perform mechanical work as the difference between the hotter reservoir and colder
reservoir grows larger.
Carnot’s unpublished notes from a few years later contain ideas that attempt to
directly connect heat to indestructible energy or motive power:
Heat is simply motive power, or rather motion which has changed form. It is a movement
among the particles of bodies. Wherever there is destruction of motive power there is, at the
same time, production of heat in quantity exactly proportional to the quantity of motive
power destroyed. Reciprocally, wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of
motive power. We can then establish the general proposition that motive power is, in quantity, invariable in nature; that it is, correctly speaking, never either produced or destroyed. It
is true that it changes form, that is, it produces sometimes one sort of motion, sometimes
another, but it is never annihilated. Carnot (1830 Trans. Thurston, R.H. 1897)
Twenty years later, this insight into the conservation of energy would be codified by
Rudolph Clausius as the first of four thermodynamics laws.
2.5.1 First Three Laws of Thermodynamics
Three laws of thermodynamics were formalized during the last half of the nineteenth and at the very start of the twentieth centuries. They establish energy’s eternality and indestructability, its one directional flow through time, and the limit of
any system to be completely devoid of it.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor
destroyed. It only transforms from one type of energy to another. Formalizing the
earlier work of Carnot, Clausius succinctly posits that “In all cases in which work is
produced by the agency of heat, a quantity of heat is consumed which is proportional to the work done; and conversely, by the expenditure of an equal quantity of
work an equal quantity of heat is produced” (Clausius, 1850, in Ganesan 2018).
The Second Law holds that energy’s capacity to do work diminishes through
time. Clausius goes beyond the work of Carnot to explain the inexorable movement
of everything toward a state of disorder. He writes that “heat can never pass from a
colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring
at the same time” (Clausius 1867). All matter and well-ordered concentrations of
energy, therefore, tends to dissipate into less organized states or lower-quality
energy (heat) and toward maximum entropy.
The Third Law establishes that entropy can only approach zero degrees. Walther
Nernst heat theorem in 1906 establishes the practical fact that the universe or any
open or closed system within it can never reach absolute zero.
It is impossible for any procedure to lead to the isotherm T = 0 in a finite number of steps
(Bailyn 1994).
2 The Energy Essential: Physical Forces Animate All Things