XXXI.—On Thermodynamic Motivity
After having for many years felt with Professor Tait the want of a word “to express the Availability for work of the heat in a given magazine, a term for that possession the waste of which is called Dissipation” I now suggest the word Motivity to supply this want.In my paper on the “Restoration of Energy from an Unequally Heated Space,” published in the Philosophical Magazine for January 1853, I gave the following expression for the amount of “mechanical energy” derivable from a body B, given with its different parts at different temperatures, by the equalisation of its temperature throughout to one common temperature T, by means of perfect thermodynamic engines,—where t denotes the temperature of any point x, y, z of the body; c the thermal capacity of the body's substance at that point and that temperature; J, Joule's equivalent; and μ, Carnot's function of the temperature t.