everywhere. In every actual case of motion the moving bodies are subject to friction and to collision, their energy is dissipated and they come to rest. This dissipation of energy is always accompanied by the generation of heat, and experience shows that the amount of heat generated is equivalent to the energy dissipated (first law of thermodynamics). It is important to understand that the term dissipation of energy refers to the conversion of mechanical energy into heat by friction or collision.[1] Thus energy is dissipated in the bearing of a rotating shaft, energy is dissipated when a hammer strikes a nail, and so on. The atomic theory enables one to form a clear idea of the dissipation of energy. Thus, the energy of the regular motion of a hammer is converted into energy of irregular molecular motion when the hammer strikes a nail.
It is worth while to give a statement of the first law of thermodynamics reduced to its simplest terms. A given substance is heated by the dissipation of work and brought back to its initial state by being cooled by contact with another (cooler) substance B. Then, if the loss of heat to surrounding bodies is carefully avoided, the thermal effect produced in substance B is exactly the same as would be produced in it if it had been heated directly by the dissipation of the original amount of work. Therefore a substance which is heated by the dissipation of work stores something which is equivalent to the work and which is called heat.
Gay Lussacs Law and the Air Thermometer.—When a number of closed vessels containing different gases at the same pressure are carried from a cool cellar, for example, to a warm room, they all suffer the same rise of temperature, and all of the gases show the same increase of pressure. That is to say, all gases follow the same law of increase of pressure with increase of temperature, the volumes of the containing vessels being constant. This fact was discovered by Gay Lussac and it is called Gay Lussac's Law. This law affords a convenient basis for the definition of temperature ratios, convenient because not dependent upon any particular gas. The ratio of two temperatures (provisionally defined) is the ratio of the pressures of a constant volume of gas at the respective temperatures. That is, if p and p′ are pressures of a constant volume of a gas at temperatures T and T′, respectively, then we have by definition
| (1) |
The air thermometer is a device for measuring the ratio of two temperatures by observing the pressures of a constant volume of dry air at the respective temperatures.
- ↑ Energy is also dissipated in a wire in which an electric current flows.
