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American Journal of Physics -- February 1987 -- Volume 55, Issue 2, pp. 120

Carnot’s function: Origins of the thermodynamic concept of temperature

William H. Cropper

Chemistry Department, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York 13617

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This paper traces an important chapter in the evolution of the temperature concept in classical thermodynamics. The centerpiece in the story is the temperature function discovered by Carnot, and gradually developed over a period of 30 yr by Clapeyron, Holtzmann, Helmholtz, Joule, Rankine, Thomson (Kelvin), and Clausius. In Thomson’s final resolution of the problem, Carnot’s function simply determined the thermodynamic temperature scale.

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

THERMODYNAMICS, HISTORICAL ASPECTS, TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT, CARNOT CYCLE

PACS

  • 05.70.Ce

    Thermodynamic functions and equations of state

  • 01.65.+g

    History of science

History
Received Nov 1985
Accepted Mar 1986

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0002-9505 (print)  

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.15255

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