by virulentor Mon May 31, 2010 2:51 pm
Chemistry may sound deep and profound to certain people, but signs of chemistry actually show up in every aspects of our daily life: cooking, cleaning, dressing, entertaining. It is also central to most of science and technology, blending at one extreme into physics, mathematics, engineering and even the earth and life sciences. Chemists are employed in industries which provide us food, ,medicines, energy, consumer goods, in regulatory bodies that protect our health and environment and in research institutions that provide new materials and techniques for the future. In other words, chemistry is an essential part of modern life. The knowledge of chemistry covers an enormously large area, having myriads amounts of branches. This research paper will focus on James Prescott Joule 's experiment on one of the most important branch of chemistry, heat.---
The mysterious energy, heat, in moving objects was first recognized by Sir Isaac Newton in the late seventeenth century. What made an airplane or train moving? Certainly, it must be the coal or gasoline that provides energy to the engine to make them move. But what was this particular heat produced by coal and gasoline that could move heavy objects? Was heat a material, a motion of some kind, or something entirely different? These questions attracted many scientists to study heat. But not until the end of eighteenth century did people made some important progress on the nature of heat.
The key event that leads people to understand how heat works was an observation made my a scientist, Benjamin Thompson. While supervising the boring of a cannon at Munich in 1798, Benjamin Thompson was amazed by the shockingly large amount of heat produced by the boring instrument. When the boring instrument was placed in cold water to cool off, the water soon boiled. Benjamin Thompson was surprised to see that the water can actually boil with a fire being put on. After studying and analyzing this phenomenon, Benjamin Thompson concluded that the motion of the boring instrument produced some kind of motion inside the metal of the cannon which manifested itself as heat. Thus accoring to Benjamin Thompson, heat was not a material substance but a motion of some kind. However, the knowledge of heat was not complete, some questions still remained unsolved. One question was whether energy can be created or destroyed. One of the famous scientist who worked on this question was James Prescott Joule.
James Prescott Joule was an English physicist and brewer. James Prescott Joule's main contributions to the Chemistry field were his study of the nature of heat, and discovery of its relationship to mechanical work. He was also famous for his accuracy in experiments. James Prescott Joule was born into a brewer's family at Salford, England on Christmas Eve of the year 1818. Joule's work experience at brewing and his access practical technology explain why his experiment results were extremely accurate. Although a delicate child, James Prescott Joule did not go to regular schools, but received education from his mother's half sister. Joule's interest in Science emerged after his father sent him to John Dalton, who was one of the most renown chemist, meterologist and physicist of all time. Joule received knowledges on algebra, arithmetic, geometry, and finally, chemistry from Dalton's own master piece "New System of Chemical Philosophy." Dalton's teaching on the constitution of mixed gases, and on the behavior of vapors and gases under heat had greatly influenced Joule, who then verified the law of conversion of energy in his study of the transfer of mechanical energy into heat energy and determined the numerical relation between heat and mechanical energy.