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Inventions and Ideas on Energy
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Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz was born on 1st of July, 1646, in Germany. He was mathmatician and philopsher, who co-invented calculus. He was a diligent student, and taught himself latin at the age of 8. At the age of 15, he entered the University of Leipzig as a law student. His first two years were devoted to philosphy. Leibniz wrote a thesis introducing his idea of "monads". -
Leibniz's inventions and ideas
Gottfriend Leibniz had a keen interest in motion. He claimed that movement depends on the action of spirit. Leibniz was known for his wide ranges of truth: the principal of sufficent reason (nothing occurs without a logical explanation), the principal of an a priori harmony in the world, and the principal of non-contradiction. -
Leibniz's Ideas on Heat
Gottfried Leibniz was very interested in the idea of motion and energy. His ideas on energy opposed those of Sir Isaac Newton. His monads functioned as what we know now as potinential energy. He claimed that there was materialiality in time or space, no velocity or direction of movement, and that each monad was part of a larger "colony" which combined, with the directives of God, to form different elements of our universe. -
Joseph Black
Joseph Black was a scottish physician who observed that when a cold object is placed in a cup of hot water, and then removed, the object becomes much warmer. He suggested that heat was an invisible fluid, called a caloric fluid, which flows naturally from hot to cold things. Joseph Black mistakenly thought that an actual substance was being transferred from the water to the spoon. He was the first to discover latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. -
Rumford's Achievements
Rumford was the founder and the first recipient of the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society. He was also the founder of the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Rumford professorship in Harvard University. He also invented the Rumford fireplace, in which he made fireplaces smaller, shallower with widely angled coverings. -
Rumford's ideas on energy
While supervising his workers, who were boring brass cyclinders, Rumford noticed that a huge amount of heat was being generated in the bored metal. He also noticed that the amount of heat was endless, as long as the workers continued to bore brass. Count Rumford's experiments produced strong evidence against Black's theory of fluid heat. He was the first to realize heat and mechanical energy were related. -
Count Rumford
Benjamin Count Rumford, also known as Benjamin Thompson was born on the 26th of March 1753. He was from Wodburn, Massachusetts. Rumford was a British-American man of science, philantropist, and administator, He was a strong student as a child, and succeeded in science, mathematics, geometry, alegbra, and astronomy. He became the minister of war in Bavaria. -
James Prescott's ideas on energy
James Prescott came up with numerous ideas and theories behind energy and the motion of it. Between 1837 and 1847, James established the principle of conservation of energy, and the equivilence of heat and other forms of energy. -
James Prescott's connection to thermodynamics
James Prescott was one of the first scientists to validate the idea of thermodynamics. His law on the conservation of energy, helped establish the first law of therodynamics. The law states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can be changed from one form to another. -
James Prescott Joule
James Prescott was born on the 24th of December, 1818. He came from a wealthy family in Manchester, and was tutored by John Dalton. He often performed experimenents in is father's basement, and was intrigued by the idea of energy and motion. -
James Prescott's inventions and achievements
James Prescott was an extroidinary inventor. He invented the "arc", also known as electrical welding, and the displacement pump. After subscribing to "The Annals of Electricity" by William Sturgeon, James tried but failed to build a motor that would generate infinite power. He did, however, create a electro-magnetic engine. Joule, a type of meaurement for energy, was named after James Prescott Joule. -
Joules Law
By 1840, James Prescott Jouls had established Joules law. Joules law defines the relationship between current in a wire and the therma energy produced. That is, the rate of generation of heat by an electric circuit was proportional to the square of the current multiplied by the resistance. (P=I^2R) -
James Prescott Joule
By 1847, James Joule started to measure the heat produced through the action of falling weights. He used his famous "paddel wheel" experiement. He came to the conclusion that all systems contain energy which can be converted from one form to another, but the total energy of a closed system remains constant.
