Category:
Research Papers
Sub-Category:
Ecology - Life/Social Sciences
Date Published:
June 16, 2022
Keywords:
universal system of measurement, nature of heat, heat transfers, combustion, calcination, respiration, calorimeter, specific heat, heat of combination, heat of combustion, heat of respiration, heat of melting, Irving hypothesis, caloric, kinetic theory of
Abstract:
This article examines the famous scientific collaboration that took place in the years 1777-1783 between the physicist, mathematician and astronomer P. S. Laplace and the chemist and biologist A. L. of Lavoisier. The main objective of the collaboration was the construction of instruments and the development of new experimental methods and techniques that would allow precise measurements of the heat transfers involved in some chemical, physical and biological processes. The methods used were independent of theories about the nature of heat. All this at a time when the nature of heat had not yet been fully elucidated, the most important theories being the caloric fluid theory (defended by Lavoisier) and the kinetic theory of heat (probably defended by Laplace). The results were published in the form of four articles that are known as Mémoire sur la chaleur. The main instrument used in these experiments was the Lavoisier-Laplace calorimeter which used as a measure of the heat released in the processes examined, the water from the melting of ice caused by those same processes. The main such thermal processes were combustion, calcination, fusion and respiration.
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