Analysis of Physics University Students' Knowledge and Understanding of Thermodynamic Scientists

This study aims to determine the knowledge and understanding of physics students related to thermodynamic scientists. This research method is descriptive quantitative and qualitative. Collecting data using a google form-based test instrument with 3 levels of questions on six scientist figures, namely Joseph Black, Robert Boyle, Joseph Louis Gay Lussac, Sadi Carnot, James Presscout Joule, and Gabriel Fahrenheit. The subjects of this research were students of physics at the State University of Surabaya in levels one and two who had taken basic physics courses. Based on research data, the percentage of respondents understanding related to thermodynamics, namely 12% did not know thermodynamics scientists, 24% only knew thermodynamics scientists, 40% understood the concept of thermodynamic scientists sufficiently, 24% understood the concept and could explain the concept of thermodynamic scientists findings as a whole. University students' knowledge and understanding related to thermodynamic scientists are mostly at the level of understanding. The most widely known figure of thermodynamic scientists and the concept of the most widely understood is Robert Boyle and the most unknown is Joseph Louis Gay Lussac.

“Alkaline Doctor” and “A Dangerous Innovator”

In 1795 Barker read Lavoisier’s chemistry, experimented on tainted meat made edible by soaking in alkalis, and began using alkaline therapy such a limewater. He wrote about this to Samuel Mitchill and Benjamin Rush, telling them that he had been called a “dangerous innovator.” A brief history of the acid/alkali debates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries includes information about Otto Tachenius, John Colbatch, Hermann Boerhaave, George Ernst Stahl, William Cullen, Joseph Black, and Antoine Lavoisier. Barker wrote about his experiments, azotic air (nitrogen), and his difficulty understanding the mechanism of this apparently successful therapy. His results were published in the Medical Repository, beginning a correspondence with Samuel Latham Mitchill, professor of chemistry at Columbia University. Contributors to the discussion of alkalis included David Hosack, Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, Humphry Davy, and Matthew Carey. Comments by Charles Rosenberg, John Harley Warner, Lester King, and others help us make sense of medical science and the acid/alkali battle.

Joseph Black and the rise of heat capacity

By developing the science of calorimetry and the doctrines of sensible and latent heats, Joseph Black separated temperature from heat. Subsequent research by others on the concept of heat capacity led to the Dulong–Petit Law, which can be understood based on the atomic theory of matter.

James Watt (1736-1819)

James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer developed in Scotland, the land of birth. His prominence as a scientist, technologist and businessman was forged in the Birmingham area. His pumping and rotative steam engines represent the summit of technological achievement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries which led to future developments in locomotive and steamship design and mechanical engineering such as the steam hammer. This is the traditional picture of James Watt. After his death, his son, James Watt junior, projected his father’s image through commissioning sculptures, medals, paintings and biographies which celebrated his reputation as a ‘great man’ of industry and science. Though some academic appraisals have sought to move beyond the heroic image of Watt, there is still a tendency to focus on his steam technology. This collection of ten chapters breaks new ground by looking at Watt in new ways: by exploring his philosophical and intellectual background; the relevance of his Greenock environment; the influence of his wives, Peggy and Ann; Watt’s political fears and beliefs; his links with other scientists such as Thomas Beddoes, Davies Giddy, Humphry Davy, Joseph Black and James Keir; Watt and the business of natural philosophy; his workshop in the Science Museum and what it reveals; the myth or reality of his involvement with organ making and the potential of Birmingham’s Watt Papers for further exploration of his personality, family and domestic and business activities.

Catalysing Chemical Correspondence

James Watt has already been established as a competent eighteenth-century chemist. His role as a chemical correspondent, however, has not been examined adequately. This chapter argues that through well-timed letters Watt circulated vital knowledge between two contemporary chemists, Joseph Black and James Keir. Two case studies in industrial chemistry—the production of alkali and the separation of plated metals—reveal Watt to be an active letter writer who initiated collaboration between business partners and communicated processes promptly. No mere passive conduit of information, Watt was a confidant who encouraged propriety in the manner of correspondence. He was a lynchpin between Black and Keir when the former was fearful of writing the latter, and he censured ill-timed disclosure of industrial secrets. This chapter concludes that future study of Watt’s epistolary exchanges with other chemists will establish more firmly his mediating role in chemical correspondence in the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters.

MORAL CULTURE AND HISTORICAL PROGRESS IN THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT

We continue to be intrigued by the Scottish Enlightenment. How was it that a relatively remote country on the geographical periphery of Europe—with a harsh climate, a largely mountainous terrain, a strict Calvinist creed, a small population and a history of civil strife—emerged in the 1740s as a “hotbed of genius” and a center of the European Enlightenment? The subject, to be sure, has been well studied. There is an immense literature and it can seem that there is little new to be said. Indeed, it may be, as the eminent historian Colin Kidd has observed in this journal, that “the very concept of the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ has become a stale historiographical commonplace.” And yet the subject continues to intrigue, continues to attract scholars from a variety of disciplines. For something extraordinary happened in eighteenth-century Scotland. Simply to list some of the names cannot fail to impress: David Hume in philosophy and historical writing, Frances Hutcheson in moral philosophy, Adam Smith in moral philosophy and economic thought, Adam Ferguson in social thought, Thomas Reid in philosophy, William Robertson in historical writing, Hugh Blair in rhetoric and literary studies, James Hutton in geology, and Joseph Black in chemistry. The achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment were immense; its world influence has been enduring. And at its heart was the study of moral philosophy and of the moral progress of humankind.

Thermal Physics and Thermodynamics

This article discusses some of the significant themes in the development of thermal physics up to the establishment of classical thermodynamics. It begins with a review of the scientific study of heat, focusing on developments in the areas of thermometry and calorimetry. It then considers work on specific and latent heats, including those of Joseph Black, William Irvine, and Adair Crawford, as well as the interesting questions raised by the concepts of specific and latent heat in their interrelationship. It also examines the physics of caloric and gases, with particular emphasis on the debate over adiabatic heating and cooling; the motion of heat and its transfer between bodies; debates on the nature of heat; and heat as a state function. The article concludes with an overview of the emergence of classical thermodynamics.

The “Subtile Aereal Spirit of Fountains”: Mineral Waters and the History of Pneumatic Chemistry

The standard history of pneumatic chemistry is dominated by a landmark-discoverers-type narrative stretching from Robert Boyle, through Stephen Hales, Joseph Black, and Joseph Priestley, to Antoine Lavoisier. This article challenges this view by demonstrating the importance of the study of mineral waters – and their “aerial component” – to the evolution of pneumatic chemistry, from around van Helmont to the period before Black (1640s–1750s). Among key figures examined are Joan Baptista van Helmont, Johann Joachim Becher, Robert Boyle, Friedrich Hoffmann, and William Brownrigg.

3. Gases and atoms

Until the mid-18th century, chemists had no understanding of the role of air in chemical changes. The Chemical Revolution was not merely conceptual, but also instrumental in that it involved the practical ability to manipulate, weigh, and measure gases using accurate balances, glass apparatus, and eudiometers. The chemist who transformed our views of elements, composition, and reorganized the way that chemists communicated was the French civil servant Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94). ‘Gases and atoms’ outlines Lavoisier’s work on chemistry nomenclature along with the key chemical discoveries by Joseph Black, Henry Cavendish, and Joseph Priestley. John Dalton’s atomic theory and the problem of ascertaining the molecular structure of water are also discussed.