Semina: Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas (Mar 2009)
The nature of heat: after two centuries, will it be that the caloric theory is still in some way an attractive idea or, even, useful?
Abstract
In the beginning of the 19th Century, there were two theories absolutely different on the nature of the heat: the Mechanical Theory of the Heat and the Caloric Theory. For the first theory, heat was considered as ‘a vibration’ of the atoms that compose the matter. Thus, the temperature represented the intensity of those vibrations and their propagation was a transfer of heat. When two bodies of different temperatures were put in contact, the atoms of the hottest body communicated part of its vibrations to that of the coldest body by means of collisions until the atoms of both bodies vibrated with the same intensities. For the second theory, the heat was considered a subtle fluid that filled the interior of the bodies. Spread all over the nature, that fluid was propagated or conserved by the bodies according to their properties and temperatures. Before being replaced by the conception of heat as a form of energy, in the middle of the 19th Century, the Caloric Theory reached great successes with the works of Jean-Baptiste Fourier (1768 – 1830) in 1822, Sadi Carnot (1796 – 1832), in 1824 and Émile Clapeyron (1799 – 1864) in 1834. By means of a careful revision of the analytic results of Clapeyron, developed under the basis of the Caloric Theory, we propose in this work to re-adapt these results and to compare them with current experimental data and theories, and to show that we can still understand some characteristics of the thermal phenomena, without considering heat as a form of energy. Especially in the study of the gases, we could obtain objective and precise information about absorption and liberation of heat in the isothermal processes, efficiency of the thermal machine of Carnot and the relationship among specific heats.
