Rudolf Clausius

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Clausius" redirects here. For the lunar crater, see Clausius (crater).
Rudolf Clausius
Born
Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius

(1822-01-02)2 January 1822
Köslin, Province of Pomerania, Prussia
(present-day Koszalin, Poland)
Died24 August 1888(1888-08-24) (aged 66)
Bonn, Rhine Province, Prussia, German Empire
NationalityGerman
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Signature

Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (German pronunciation:

theory of heat a truer and sounder basis. His most important paper, "On the Moving Force of Heat",[4] published in 1850, first stated the basic ideas of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1865 he introduced the concept of entropy. In 1870 he introduced the virial theorem, which applied to heat.[5]

Life

Clausius was born in

Zürich, where he stayed until 1867. During that year, he moved to Würzburg and two years later, in 1869 to Bonn.[7]

In 1870 Clausius organized an ambulance corps in the Franco-Prussian War. He was wounded in battle, leaving him with a lasting disability. He was awarded the Iron Cross for his services.

His wife, Adelheid Rimpau died in 1875, leaving him to raise their six children. In 1886, he married Sophie Sack, and then had another child. Two years later, on 24 August 1888, he died in Bonn, Germany.[8]

Work

Clausius's PhD thesis concerning the refraction of light proposed that we see a blue sky during the day, and various shades of red at sunrise and sunset (among other phenomena) due to reflection and refraction of light. Later,

Lord Rayleigh
would show that it was in fact due to the scattering of light.

His most famous paper, Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme ("On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom")[9] was published in 1850, and dealt with the mechanical theory of heat. In this paper, he showed there was a contradiction between Carnot's principle and the concept of conservation of energy. Clausius restated the two laws of thermodynamics to overcome this contradiction. This paper made him famous among scientists. (The third law was developed by Walther Nernst, during the years 1906–1912).

Clausius's most famous statement of the second law of thermodynamics was published in German in 1854,[10] and in English in 1856.[11]

Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time.

During 1857, Clausius contributed to the field of kinetic theory after refining August Krönig's very simple gas-kinetic model to include translational, rotational and vibrational molecular motions. In this same work he introduced the concept of 'Mean free path' of a particle.[12][13][14]

Clausius deduced the Clausius–Clapeyron relation from thermodynamics. This relation, which is a way of characterizing the phase transition between two states of matter such as solid and liquid, had originally been developed in 1834 by Émile Clapeyron.

  • 1864 edition of Clausius' Abhandlungen über die mechanische Wärmetheorie, volume I
    1864 edition of Clausius' Abhandlungen über die mechanische Wärmetheorie, volume I
  • Title page of an 1864 edition of Clausius' Abhandlungen über die mechanische Wärmetheorie, volume I
    Title page of an 1864 edition of Clausius' Abhandlungen über die mechanische Wärmetheorie, volume I
  • 1879 English translation of Clausius' The Mechanical Theory of Heat
    1879 English translation of Clausius' The Mechanical Theory of Heat
  • Title page of an 1879 English translation of Clausius' The Mechanical Theory of Heat
    Title page of an 1879 English translation of Clausius' The Mechanical Theory of Heat

Entropy

Main article: History of entropy
See also: History of thermodynamics § Rudolf Clausius

In 1865, Clausius gave the first mathematical version of the concept of entropy, and also gave it its name.[8] Clausius chose the word because the meaning (from Greek ἐν en "in" and τροπή tropē "transformation") is "content transformative" or "transformation content" ("Verwandlungsinhalt").[4][15][16]

I prefer going to the ancient languages for the names of important scientific quantities, so that they may mean the same thing in all living tongues. I propose, accordingly, to call S the entropy of a body, after the Greek word 'transformation'. I have designedly coined the word entropy to be similar to 'energy', for these two quantities are so analogous in their physical significance, that an analogy of denomination seemed to me helpful.

— Rudolf Clausius, Ueber verschiedene für die Anwendung bequeme Formen der Hauptgleichungen der mechanischen Wärmetheorie

He used the now abandoned unit 'Clausius' (symbol: Cl) for entropy.[17]

1 Clausius (Cl) = 1
degree Celsius (cal/°C) = 4.1868 joules per kelvin
(J/K)

The landmark 1865 paper in which he introduced the concept of entropy ends with the following summary of the first and second laws of thermodynamics:[4]

The energy of the universe is constant.
The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.

Leon Cooper[16] added that in this way he succeeded in coining a word that meant the same thing to everybody: nothing.

Tributes

Memorial stone in front of Koszalin University of Technology, with the laws of thermodynamics as formulated by Clausius

Publications

  • Clausius, R. (1867). The Mechanical Theory of Heat – with its Applications to the Steam Engine and to Physical Properties of Bodies. London: John van Voorst. editions:PwR_Sbkwa8IC. English translations of nine papers.
  • Abhandlungen über die Anwendung der mechanischen Wärmetheorie auf die elektrischen Erscheinungen, nebst einer Einleitung in die mathematische Behandlung der Elektricität (in French). Vol. 2. Bruxelles: Société belge d'éditions. 1898.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-3-411-04067-4
    .
  2. ISBN 978-3-11-018202-6
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-435-54150-7
  4. ^ a b c Clausius, R. (1867). The Mechanical Theory of Heat – with its Applications to the Steam Engine and to Physical Properties of Bodies. London: John van Voorst. Retrieved 19 June 2012. editions:PwR_Sbkwa8IC. Contains English translations of many of his other works.
  5. ^ Clausius, RJE (1870). "On a Mechanical Theorem Applicable to Heat". Philosophical Magazine. 4th Series. 40: 122–127.
  6. ^ Emilio Segrè (2012). From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves: Classical Physicists and Their Discoveries. Courier Dover Publications. p. 228
  7. ^ "Rudolf Clausius, Prof. Dr". physik.uzh.ch (in German). Universität Zürich. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-517324-6
    . Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  9. hdl:2027/uc1.$b242250.. See English Translation: On the Moving Force of Heat, and the Laws regarding the Nature of Heat itself which are deducible therefrom. Phil. Mag. (1851), series 4, 2, 1–21, 102–119. Also available on Google Books
    .
  10. doi:10.1002/andp.18541691202
    . Retrieved 25 June 2012.
  11. doi:10.1080/14786445608642141
    . Retrieved 25 June 2012.
  12. doi:10.1002/andp.18571760302
  13. doi:10.1002/andp.18621910102
  14. ^ Clausius, R. (1864), Abhandlungen über die Mechanische Wärmetheorie. Electronic manuscript from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
  15. doi:10.1002/andp.18652010702
  16. ^ a b Cooper, Leon N. (1968). An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics. Harper. p. 331.
  17. S2CID 6658005
    .
  18. ^ "R.J.E. Clausius (1822–1888)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Rudolf Clausius.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rudolf Clausius.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rudolf_Clausius&oldid=1259907066"