The commercialization of the high-pressure steam engines by the Cornish Engineers of Britain inspired Sadi Carnot, a French military engineer, to analyze these engines and seek the theories to guide their improvement. If you’re interested in doing a deep dive into Sadi Carnot’s work, here are two excellent references. I go into much more depthContinue reading “The Road to Entropy – Sadi Carnot’s use of analogy to create his “flawed” masterpiece (video)”
Tag Archives: Sadi Carnot
Thermodynamics: What is “heat”? (video)
The word “heat” can be very confusing to those trying to learn and understand thermodynamics. I created the below video to help clarify things. I go into more detail about this topic and many others in my book Block by Block – The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics.
How to conduct powerful science? Check your ego at the door.
Observe nature, take measurements, and then propose as many hypotheses as you possibly can that are consistent with the data. In this way, you shift the focus from a negative conflict between scientists, each embracing their own individual hypothesis, to a positive, exciting, and team-based conflict between ideas in which technical debate among those with differing perspectives is encouraged in order to learn and not to win.
The 170th Anniversary of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics — A Tribute to Rudolf Clausius
Upon publishing my book, Block by Block – The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics, Oxford University Press kindly invited me to write a post related to my book for their academic blog. I gladly accepted and chose as my topic the creation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics by Rudolf Clausius’ work of 1850.Continue reading “The 170th Anniversary of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics — A Tribute to Rudolf Clausius”
Identifying the Micro behind the Macro 