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.