Ice Melting Blocks
The history of thermodynamics is a key component in the history of physics, the history of chemistry, and the history of science in general. The development of thermodynamics was driven by atomic theory. It is a branch of science concerned with the nature of heat and its conversion to mechanical, electric, and chemical energy. Thermochemistry is the study of heat transfer during reactions and processes. Many things in the real world are a result of the transfer of heat, from the simple things such as putting ice into your glass of water to the common such as burning fuel for a car. (Chemtutorial.webs.com) “When the external conditions are altered, a thermodynamic system will respond by changing its state; the temperature, volume, pressure, and chemical composition will adjust to a new equilibrium.” (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia) Thermodynamics applies to a wide variety of topics in science and engineering and are essential for other fields such as physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, cell biology, and many more.
There are four major types of thermodynamic processes.
· Adiabatic process (which is a process with no heat transfer into or out of the system)
· Isochoric process (a process with no change in volume)
· Isobaric process (a process with no change in pressure)
· Isothermal process (a process with no change in temperature)
The world's first ice-calorimeter, used in the winter of 1782-1783, by Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace, was to determine the heat evolved in various chemical changes, calculations which were based on Joseph Blacks prior discovery of latent heat. These experiments marked the foundation of thermochemistry.