All Steamed Up
The laws of thermodynamics were difficult to figure out, largely because scientists of the time didn't really understand what heat was. The urge to make money set these people to inventing devices that could use the heat of coal to pump water out of the mines in Europe - whether or not they understood why these devices worked.
Answer the following questions about heat:
1.What is phlogiston? Use this idea to explain why burning objects get hot.
2.What is the origin of the word "calorie"? Provide an explanation of why you feel cold in a rain shower using the caloric theory.
3.Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) was a "wild kinda guy" as well as the man who put the caloric theory in doubt. What experiment did he do to discredit the caloric theory? Find and relate an anecdote about Count Rumford that shows his wild side.
4.How did James Joule demonstrate that mechanical energy is equivalent to heat?
Joules work was the culmination of more that sixty years of work done with heat. The first working steam engine was pumping water well over one hundred years earlier than this! Find the answers to these questions about steam engines:
1.Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen designed the first steam engines for pumping water out of mines. Find a diagram (or better yet a computer animation (applet)) that shows how these work. What was the biggest disadvantage of these machines?
2.James Watt made a significant improvement to the steam engine. Find out what the improvement was and how the chemist Joseph Black may have helped Watt with his idea.
3.Watt, and some of his friends were menbers of the "Lunar Society". Name some of these people. What kind of an education system did they think Britain should create?
4.Richard Trevithick was a pioneer of the use of high pressure steam. What invention is he famous for?
5.Who invented the first steam locomotive? When did people stop using steam locomotives? Why?
Resources that may help: