Kelvin, Lord William Thompson thermodynamics

Fig. 25. - Approximate sketch of the growth of thermodynamic conception with the portraits of some famous pioneers, left column from above Joseph Black (1728-1799), Sadi Nicholas Carnot (1796-1832), Rudolf Jutius Clausius (1822-1888), Josiah Wiiland Gibbs (1839-1903), Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906), right Kelvin, Baron of Larges, Lord Williams Thompson (1824-1907), Jean Baptiste Fourier (1768-1830), James Clark Maxwell (1831-1879), Max Carl Planck (1858-1947), Lars Onsager (1903-1976), middle Sir Issak Newton (1642-1726), Clifford Ambrose Truesdell (1921 -) and Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003).

Two of the architects of modem thermodynamics were William Thompson (better known as Lord Kelvin) and his friend James Prescott Joule - a scientist of great vision, and a master of accurate thermodynamic measurement, as well as being something of an English eccentric. For example, while on a holiday in Switzerland in 1847, Thompson met Joule. Let Thompson describe what he saw ... 

When an enzyme-catalyzed biochemical reaction operating in an isothermal system is in a non-equilibrium steady state, energy is continuously dissipated in the form of heat. The quantity J AG is the rate of heat dissipation per unit time. The inequality of Equation (4.13) means that the enzyme can extract energy from the system and dissipate heat and that an enzyme cannot convert heat into chemical energy. This fact is a statement of the second law of thermodynamics, articulated by William Thompson (who was later given the honorific title Lord Kelvin), which states that with only a single temperature bath T, one may convert chemical work to heat, but not vice versa. 

One of the early triumphs of the study of thermodynamics was the demonstration that there is an absolute zero of temperature. However, there are several different temperature scales, for historical reasons. All you need to know about this is that the kelvin scale (named after William Thompson, Lord Kelvin) has an absolute zero of OK and a temperature of 273.16K at the triple point where water, ice, and water vapor are at equilibrium together. The melting point of ice at one atmosphere pressure is 0.01 degrees less than this, at 273.15 K (Figure 3.1). The Celsius scale (named after Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer) has a temperature of 0 °C at the ice point (273.15 K) and absolute zero at -273.15°C. This gives almost exactly 100 C between the freezing and boiling points of water at one atmosphere, so water boils at 100 "C (373.15 K). Thus the numerical conversion between the two scales is... 

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