Caloric theory

The Caloric Theory (English: caloric, heat on ) is an outdated theory of heat. It postulates a caloric substance that is invisible, has no weight, resides between the molecules and thus permeates the body boundaries. The caloric substance developed in himself a repulsive force, which explains why she seeks the balance from high to low concentration, ie flows from the warmer to the colder body.

It was in 1783 by Lavoisier, building on the work of Joseph Black introduced, although Daniel Bernoulli had proposed the kinetic theory of gases in 1738, and survived well into the 19th century. Lavoisier, who had discovered the conservation of mass in chemical reactions and tidy with the phlogiston theory, the heat treated as another element: not produced and not destroyed, their amount in the world remains the same. Similar elements combine with each other in various proportions, the same amount should cause different temperatures caloric substance in different bodies. The relaxation of the molecules due to the accumulation of caloric substance causes according to the theory the transition solid-liquid and liquid-gas. Also the difference in thermal capacity of gas at constant volume and the adiabatic expansion is treated as part of this theory, as well as the extraction of work from heat by Carnot.

The theory can be disproved by a simple experiment: you rub two bodies together, they will be warmer at the contact point. Since this is not the environment gets colder, apparently no caloric fluid flows from the outside to the bodies out. Furthermore, since the friction process can be maintained as long as desired and always more heat is generated, the liquid of the body itself can not ' secret stores ' come, as these would eventually exhausted. Count Rumford was the first that was on this anomaly, which represented this process for the Caloric theory, attentive.

However, the set contained of conservation of caloric substance a kernel of truth. He transformed himself by Rudolf Clausius in the first law of thermodynamics, according to which the sum of heat and mechanical energy remains constant.

  • Thermodynamics
  • About Holte theory (Physics)
461253
de