Abstract
James Joule played the major role in establishing the conservation of energy, or the first law of thermodynamics, as a universal, all-pervasive principle of physics. He was an experimentalist par excellence and his place in the development of thermodynamics is unarguable. This article discusses Joule's life and scientific work culminating in the 1850 paper, where he presented his detailed measurements of the mechanical equivalent of heat using his famous paddle-wheel apparatus. Joule's long series of experiments in the 1840s leading to his realisation that the conservation of energy was probably of universal validity is discussed in context with the work of other pioneers, notably Sadi Carnot, who effectively formulated the principle of the second law of thermodynamics a quarter of a century before the first law was accepted. The story of Joule's work is a story of an uphill struggle against a critical scientific establishment unwilling to accept the mounting evidence until it was impossible to ignore. His difficulties in attracting funding and publishing in reputable journals despite the quality of his work will resonate with many young scientists and engineers of the present day. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Highlights
Outside the scientific and engineering communities the name of James Prescott Joule is not widely known virtually every packet of food purchased in a supermarket lists the energy value of the2015 The Authors
For example, did you last hear someone declare, ‘there were far too many joules in that pudding’? Until 1853, when William Rankine coined the terms potential energy and actual energy, Joule himself would not have been familiar with the word energy as a precisely defined scientific quantity. He would have recognized calorie as being related to the caloric theory of heat, a theory that was accepted by almost all scientists of the time and which Joule was instrumental in overturning and replacing by the axiomatic principle we call the conservation of energy or the first law of thermodynamics
Thomson realized the importance of the work and provided an account of the theory for the English-speaking reader [7]. He was not prepared to renounce the caloric theory and wrote, ‘To deny it would be to overturn the whole theory of heat, in which it is the fundamental principle’
Summary
Outside the scientific and engineering communities the name of James Prescott Joule (figure 1) is not widely known virtually every packet of food purchased in a supermarket lists the energy value of the. Until 1853, when William Rankine coined the terms potential energy and actual (i.e. kinetic) energy, Joule himself would not have been familiar with the word energy as a precisely defined scientific quantity. He would, have recognized calorie as being related to the caloric theory of heat, a theory that was accepted by almost all scientists of the time ( called natural philosophers) and which Joule was instrumental in overturning and replacing by the axiomatic principle we call the conservation of energy or the first law of thermodynamics
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