|
Maxwell's Thermodynamic Surface
Maxwell’s thermodynamic surface is an 1874 sculpture made by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879). This model provides a three-dimensional space of the various states of a fictitious substance with water-like properties. This plot has coordinates volume (x), entropy (y), and energy (z). It was based on the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs’ graphical thermodynamics papers of 1873. The model, in Maxwell's words, allowed "the principal features of known substances obe represented on a convenient scale." Construction of the model Gibbs' papers defined what Gibbs called the "thermodynamic surface," which expressed the relationship between the volume, entropy, and energy of a substance at different temperatures and pressures. However, Gibbs did not include any diagrams of this surface. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Andrews (scientist)
Thomas Andrews FRS FRSE (19 December 181326 November 1885) was an Irish chemist and physicist who did important work on phase transitions between gases and liquids. He was a longtime professor of chemistry at Queen's University of Belfast. Life Andrews was born in Belfast, Ireland, where his father was a linen merchant. He attended the Belfast Academy and the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, where at the latter of which he studied mathematics under James Thomson. In 1828 he went to the University of Glasgow to study chemistry under Professor Thomas Thomson, then studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where he gained distinction in classics as well as in science. Finally, at University of Edinburgh in 1835, he was awarded a doctorate in medicine. Andrews began a successful medical practice in his native Belfast in 1835, also giving instruction in chemistry at the Academical Institution. In 1845 he was appointed vice-president of the newly established Queen's University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation". One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems titled ''The Book of the Dead'' (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis. Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life. Early life Muriel Rukeyser was born on December 15, 1913 to Lawrence and Myra Lyons Rukeyser. She attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school in The Bronx, then Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. From 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carbon Dioxide
Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light but absorbs infrared radiation, acting as a greenhouse gas. It is a trace gas in Earth's atmosphere at 421 parts per million (ppm), or about 0.04% by volume (as of May 2022), having risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm. Burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of these increased CO2 concentrations and also the primary cause of climate change.IPCC (2022Summary for policy makersiClimate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA Carbon dioxide is soluble in water and is found in groundwater, lakes, ice caps, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temperature
Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied on various reference points and thermometric substances for definition. The most common scales are the Celsius scale with the unit symbol °C (formerly called ''centigrade''), the Fahrenheit scale (°F), and the Kelvin scale (K), the latter being used predominantly for scientific purposes. The kelvin is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units (SI). Absolute zero, i.e., zero kelvin or −273.15 °C, is the lowest point in the thermodynamic temperature scale. Experimentally, it can be approached very closely but not actually reached, as recognized in the third law of thermodynamics. It would be impossible to extract energy as heat from a body at that temperature. Temperature is important in all fields of natur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pressure
Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and even by industry. Further, both spellings are often used ''within'' a particular industry or country. Industries in British English-speaking countries typically use the "gauge" spelling. is the pressure relative to the ambient pressure. Various units are used to express pressure. Some of these derive from a unit of force divided by a unit of area; the SI unit of pressure, the pascal (Pa), for example, is one newton per square metre (N/m2); similarly, the pound-force per square inch (psi) is the traditional unit of pressure in the imperial and U.S. customary systems. Pressure may also be expressed in terms of standard atmospheric pressure; the atmosphere (atm) is equal to this pressure, and the torr is defined as of this. Manometric u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Among many honors, he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies." He served as president of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908 and as chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1908 to 1919. Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as " Rayleigh scattering", which notably explains why the sky is blue. He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as " Rayleigh waves". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics, with concepts such as the Rayleigh number (a dimen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Point (thermodynamics)
In thermodynamics, a critical point (or critical state) is the end point of a phase equilibrium curve. The most prominent example is the liquid–vapor critical point, the end point of the pressure–temperature curve that designates conditions under which a liquid and its vapor can coexist. At higher temperatures, the gas cannot be liquefied by pressure alone. At the critical point, defined by a ''critical temperature'' ''T''c and a ''critical pressure'' ''p''c, phase boundaries vanish. Other examples include the liquid–liquid critical points in mixtures, and the ferromagnet–paramagnet transition (Curie temperature) in the absence of an external magnetic field. Liquid–vapor critical point Overview For simplicity and clarity, the generic notion of ''critical point'' is best introduced by discussing a specific example, the vapor–liquid critical point. This was the first critical point to be discovered, and it is still the best known and most studied one. The figu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spinodal
In thermodynamics, the limit of local stability with respect to small fluctuations is clearly defined by the condition that the second derivative of Gibbs free energy is zero. : 0 The locus of these points (the inflection point within a G-x or G-c curve, Gibbs free energy as a function of composition) is known as the spinodal curve.G. Astarita: ''Thermodynamics: An Advanced Textbook for Chemical Engineers'' (Springer 1990), chaps 4, 8, 9, 12.Sandler S. I., ''Chemical and Engineering Thermodynamics''. 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p 571.Koningsveld K., Stockmayer W. H., Nies, E., ''Polymer Phase Diagrams: A Textbook''. 2001 Oxford, p 12. For compositions within this curve, infinitesimally small fluctuations in composition and density will lead to phase separation via spinodal decomposition. Outside of the curve, the solution will be at least metastable with respect to fluctuations. In other words, outside the spinodal curve some careful process may obtain a single phase system. Insi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supercooling
Supercooling, also known as undercooling, is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid or a gas below its melting point without it becoming a solid. It achieves this in the absence of a seed crystal or nucleus around which a crystal structure can form. The supercooling of water can be achieved without any special techniques other than chemical demineralization, down to −48.3 °C (−55 °F). Droplets of supercooled water often exist in stratus and cumulus clouds. An aircraft flying through such a cloud sees an abrupt crystallization of these droplets, which can result in the formation of ice on the aircraft's wings or blockage of its instruments and probes. Animals utilize supercooling to survive in extreme temperatures. There are many mechanisms that aid in maintaining a liquid state, such as the production of antifreeze proteins, which bind to ice crystals to prevent water molecules from binding and spreading the growth of ice. The winter flounder is on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superheating
In thermodynamics, superheating (sometimes referred to as boiling retardation, or boiling delay) is the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its boiling point, without boiling. This is a so-called ''metastable state'' or ''metastate'', where boiling might occur at any time, induced by external or internal effects.Debenedetti, P.G.Metastable Liquids: Concepts and Principles; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA, 1996.Maris, H., Balibar, S. (2000"Negative Pressures and Cavitation in Liquid Helium"Physics Today 53, 29 Superheating is achieved by heating a homogeneous substance in a clean container, free of nucleation sites, while taking care not to disturb the liquid. This may occur by microwaving water in a very smooth container. Disturbing the water may cause an unsafe eruption of hot water and result in burns. Cause Water is said to "boil" when bubbles of water vapor grow without bound, bursting at the surface. For a vapor bubble to e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triple Point
In thermodynamics, the triple point of a substance is the temperature and pressure at which the three phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of that substance coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium.. It is that temperature and pressure at which the sublimation curve, fusion curve and the vaporisation curve meet. For example, the triple point of mercury occurs at a temperature of and a pressure of 0.165 m Pa. In addition to the triple point for solid, liquid, and gas phases, a triple point may involve more than one solid phase, for substances with multiple polymorphs. Helium-4 is a special case that presents a triple point involving two different fluid phases (lambda point). The triple point of water was used to define the kelvin, the base unit of thermodynamic temperature in the International System of Units (SI). The value of the triple point of water was fixed by definition, rather than measured, but that changed with the 2019 redefinition of SI base units. The triple points of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tangent Plane
In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point. Leibniz defined it as the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. More precisely, a straight line is said to be a tangent of a curve at a point if the line passes through the point on the curve and has slope , where ''f'' is the derivative of ''f''. A similar definition applies to space curves and curves in ''n''-dimensional Euclidean space. As it passes through the point where the tangent line and the curve meet, called the point of tangency, the tangent line is "going in the same direction" as the curve, and is thus the best straight-line approximation to the curve at that point. The tangent line to a point on a differentiable curve can also be thought of as a '' tangent line approximation'', the graph of the affine function that best approximates the original function at the given point. Similarly, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
