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Liebniz
Liebniz thought that vis viva (energy) was present in everything. He resoned that there were two different types of energy. Flowing water, wind, or any object in motion was called kinetic energy. An object raised above Earth's surface has the potential to do work, this has gravitational potential energy. He also assumed that heat energy was kinetic. -
Joseph Black
Joseph Black thought that heat was an invisible fluid. He mainly observed the transformation of hot to cold and vise versa. He though heat flowed naturally from hot to cold things like water down a hill. The though energy in general was a flowing of an invisible fluid. -
Count Rumford
Rumford was the supervisor of a cannon boring factory. He noticed that you could boil a kettle on the canon right after it had been bored. If heat was a fluid the cannon would have run out, but as long as the workers continued boring, the heat would continue. He was the first to realize that heat and movement are related. -
James Presott Joules
Joules began to see patterns in how other forms of energy behaved compared to heat. He perofrmed two experaments in which he proved that heat is energy by converting other known forms of energy into heat. Such as gravitational, to kinetic, to heat. They are all related.
