1847: Laws of thermodynamics - The book of science

Laws of thermodynamics
Energy
Precedents
Commentary

Benjamin Thompson, Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, James Prescott Joule, Rudolf Clausius thermodynamics

Laws of thermodynamics

Benjamin Thompson had observed
that boring cannon barrels produced prodigious heat,
and Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot had shown
that the work that a heat engine can do
depends on only the temperature difference inside the engine,
but the relationship between heat and work
was not well understood.
Scientists described heat as a weightless fluid, called caloric,
flowing through matter
without mechanical potential.
But James Prescott Joule carefully measured
the heat generated by stirring water
learning that both heat and work transfer energy
and that no energy is lost in the transfer,
and Rudolf Clausius observed that heat doesn’t flow
from a cold object to a hot one
and claimed that the entropy of the universe
tends to a maximum.
We go from a few things that are fast and hot
to many that are slow and tepid;
yet, somehow, living things
reject enough disorder to survive.

Energy

Excited atoms bump into each other
like billiard balls on springs,
like a crowd of people excited by good news
communicated from head to head.
The first proton and electron
bumping together to make a hydrogen isotope;
the first smoke arising from sticks rubbed together
to make a fire in a cold cave;
the laying on of hands
that passed the Holy Spirit
from disciple to disciple.
You’re excited when you hear it.
Even thinking about it consumes calories.
I pour the boiling water over the leaves.
After it steeps, the hot bitter brown liquid
jazzes me up.

Precedents

The baker’s son becomes a baker;
the president’s a president.
Bred to breed
we desire what our progenitors desired
and thwart our instincts
only to thwart ourselves. And, yet,
we no longer live in trees
but in towers built by others
and can fall from them.

I admire geniuses that can realize the truth even though it is not intuitive, and the researcher who doggedly pursues the impossible; however, gullible people are easily be misled by con artists. It would be nice if such deceptions were to cause less damage than the entertainment and hope they offer.

In my pursuit of the principle of perpetual motion, the science of thermodynamics has been like a dog barking at my heels. When we want to convert nothing into something, thermodynamics points out that we will lose energy with every conversion. There can be no overunity generator, no machine that generates more energy than it takes to run it. Nevertheless, organisms organize available energy, and there is plenty of energy to be organized.