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Reference: Evolution of Physics

This paper presents Chapter I, section 6 from the book THE EVOLUTION OF PHYSICS by A. EINSTEIN and L. INFELD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by Simon and Schuster, New York (1942).

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.  Feedback on these comments is appreciated.

The heading below is linked to the original materials.

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Is Heat a Substance?

Here we begin to follow a new clue, one originating in the realm of heat phenomena. It is impossible, however, to divide science into separate and unrelated sections. Indeed, we shall soon find that the new concepts introduced here are interwoven with those already familiar, and with those we shall still meet. A line of thought developed in one branch of science can very often be applied to the description of events apparently quite different in character. In this process the original concepts are often modified so as to advance the understanding both of those phenomena from which they sprang and of those to which they are newly applied.

We now have a new clue originating in the realm of heat phenomena.

The most fundamental concepts in the description of heat phenomena are temperature and heat. It took an unbelievably long time in the history of science for these two to be distinguished, but once this distinction was made rapid progress resulted. Although these concepts are now familiar to everyone, we shall examine them closely, emphasizing the differences between them.

The breakthrough was the understanding of the difference between temperature and heat.

Our sense of touch tells us quite definitely that one body is hot and another cold. But this is a purely qualitative criterion, not sufficient for a quantitative description and sometimes even ambiguous. This is shown by a well-known experiment: we have three vessels containing, respectively, cold, warm and hot water. If we dip one hand into the cold water and the other into the hot, we receive a message from the first that it is cold and from the second that it is hot. If we then dip both hands into the same warm water, we receive two contradictory messages, one from each hand. For the same reason an Eskimo and a native of some equatorial country meeting in New York on a spring day would hold different opinions as to whether the climate was hot or cold. We settle all such questions by the use of a thermometer, an instrument designed in a primitive form by Galileo. Here again that familiar name! The use of a thermometer is based on some obvious physical assumptions. We shall recall them by quoting a few lines from lectures given about a hundred and fifty years ago by Black, who contributed a great deal toward clearing up the difficulties connected with the two concepts, heat and temperature:

By the use of this instrument we have learned, that if we take 1000, or more, different kinds of matter, such as metals, stones, salts, woods, feathers, wool, water and a variety of other fluids, although they be all at first of different heats, let them be placed together in the same room without a fire, and into which the sun does not shine, the heat will be communicated from the hotter of these bodies to the colder, during some hours perhaps, or the course of a day at the end of which time, if we apply a thermometer to them all in succession, it will point precisely to the same degree.

The italicized word heats should, according to present day nomenclature, be replaced by the word temperatures.

The sense of touch informs us only of relative degree of hotness and coldness, and not the absolute degree. For the latter we need a thermometer.

A physician taking the thermometer from a sick man’s mouth might reason like this: “The thermometer indicates its own temperature by the length of its column of mercury. We assume that the length of the mercury column increases in proportion to the increase in temperature. But the thermometer was for a few minutes in contact with my patient, so that both patient and thermometer have the same temperature. I conclude, therefore, that my patient’s temperature is that registered on the thermometer.” The doctor probably acts mechanically, but he applies physical principles without thinking about it.

Bodies in contact attain the same temperature.

But does the thermometer contain the same amount of heat as the body of the man? Of course not. To assume that two bodies contain equal quantities of heat just because their temperatures are equal would, as Black remarked, be

taking a very hasty view of the subject. It is confounding the quantity of heat in different bodies with its general strength or intensity, though it is plain that these are two different things, and should always be distinguished, when we are thinking of the distribution of heat.

An understanding of this distinction can be gained by considering a very simple experiment. A pound of water placed over a gas flame takes some time to change from room temperature to the boiling point. A much longer time is required for heating twelve pounds, say, of water in the same vessel by means of the same flame. We interpret this fact as indicating that now more of “something” is needed and we call this “something” heat.

Temperature is more like intensity of heat, which is different from quantity of heat.

A further important concept, specific heat, is gained by the following experiment: let one vessel contain a pound of water and another a pound of mercury, both to be heated in the same way. The mercury gets hot much more quickly than the water, showing that less “heat” is needed to raise the temperature by one degree. In general, different amounts of “heat” are required to change by one degree, say from 40 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperatures of different substances such as, water, mercury, iron, copper, wood etc., all of the same mass. We say that each substance has its individual heat capacity, or, specific heat.

The same amount of different substances, to reach the same temperature, requires different amount of heat. Thus, different substances have different specific heats.

Once having gained the concept of heat, we can investigate its nature more closely. We have two bodies, one hot, the other cold, or more precisely, one of a higher temperature than the other. We bring them into contact and free them from all other external influences. Eventually they will, we know, reach the same temperature. But how does this take place? What happens between the instant they are brought into contact and the achievement of equal temperatures? The picture of heat “flowing” from one body to another suggests itself, like water flowing from a higher level to a lower. This picture, though primitive, seems to fit many of the facts, so that the analogy runs:

Water—Heat
Higher level—Higher temperature
Lower level—Lower temperature

The flow proceeds until both levels, that is, both temperatures, are equal. This naive view can be made more useful by quantitative considerations. If definite masses of water and alcohol, each at a definite temperature, are mixed together, a knowledge of the specific heats will lead to a prediction of the final temperature of the mixture. Conversely, an observation of the final temperature, together with a little algebra, would enable us to find the ratio of the two specific heats.

Heat flows from hotter to cooler body on contact, just like water flows from higher to lower level upon being connected.

We recognize in the concept of heat which appears here a similarity to other physical concepts. Heat is, according to our view, a substance, such as mass in mechanics. Its quantity may change or not, like money put aside in a safe or spent. The amount of money in a safe will remain unchanged so long as the safe remains locked, and so will the amounts of mass and heat in an isolated body. The ideal thermos flask is analogous to such a safe. Furthermore, just as the mass of an isolated system is unchanged even if a chemical transformation takes place, so heat is conserved even though it flows from one body to another. Even if heat is not used for raising the temperature of a body but for melting ice, say, or changing water into steam, we can still think of it as a substance and regain it entirely by freezing the water or liquefying the steam. The old names, latent heat of melting or vaporization, show that these concepts are drawn from the picture of heat as a substance. Latent heat is temporarily hidden, like money put away in a safe, but available for use if one knows the lock combination.

But heat is certainly not a substance in the same sense as mass. Mass can be detected by means of scales, but what of heat? Does a piece of iron weigh more when red-hot than when ice-cold? Experiment shows that it does not. If heat is a substance at all, it is a weightless one. The “heat-substance” was usually called caloric and is our first acquaintance among a whole family of weightless substances. Later we shall have occasion to follow the history of the family, its rise and fall. It is sufficient now to note the birth of this particular member.

Thus, heat may be treated analogous to a substance that is conserved, but it is not a substance like mass.

The purpose of any physical theory is to explain as wide a range of phenomena as possible. It is justified in so far as it does make events understandable. We have seen that the substance theory explains many of the heat phenomena. It will soon become apparent, however, that this again is a false clue, that heat cannot be regarded as a substance, even weightless. This is clear if we think about some simple experiments which marked the beginning of civilization.

We think of a substance as something which can be neither created nor destroyed. Yet primitive man created by friction sufficient heat to ignite wood. Examples of heating by friction are, as a matter of fact, much too numerous and familiar to need recounting. In all these cases some quantity of heat is created, a fact difficult to account for by the substance theory. It is true that a supporter of this theory could invent arguments to account for it. His reasoning would run something like this: “The substance theory can explain the apparent creation of heat. Take the simplest example of two pieces of wood rubbed one against the other. Now rubbing is something which influences the wood and changes its properties. It is very likely that the properties are so modified that an unchanged quantity of heat comes to produce a higher temperature than before. After all, the only thing we notice is the rise in temperature. It is possible that the friction changes the specific heat of the wood and not the total amount of heat.”

Heat is not truly a substance because it can be created.

At this stage of the discussion it would be useless to argue with a supporter of the substance theory, for this is a matter which can be settled only by experiment. Imagine two identical pieces of wood and suppose equal changes of temperature are induced by different methods; in one case by friction and in the other by contact with a radiator, for example. If the two pieces have the same specific heat at the new temperature, the whole substance theory must break down. There are very simple methods for determining specific heats, and the fate of the theory depends on the result of just such measurements. Tests which are capable of pronouncing a verdict of life or death on a theory occur frequently in the history of physics, and are called crucial experiments. The crucial value of an experiment is revealed only by the way the question is formulated, and only one theory of the phenomena can be put on trial by it. The determination of the specific heats of two bodies of the same kind, at equal temperatures attained by friction and heat flow respectively, is a typical example of a crucial experiment. This experiment was performed about a hundred and fifty years ago by Rumford, and dealt a death blow to the substance theory of heat.

An extract from Rumford’s own account tells the story:

It frequently happens, that in the ordinary affairs and occupations of life, opportunities present themselves of contemplating some of the most curious operations of Nature; and very interesting philosophical experiments might often be made, almost without trouble or expense, by means of machinery contrived for the mere mechanical purposes of the arts and manufactures.

I have frequently had occasion to make this observation; and am persuaded, that a habit of keeping the eyes open to every thing that is going on in the ordinary course of the business of life has oftener led, as it were by accident, or in the playful excursions of the imagination, put into action by contemplating the most common appearances, to useful doubts, and sensible schemes for investigation and improvement, than all the more intense meditations of philosophers, in the hours expressly set apart for study…

Being engaged, lately, in superintending the boring of cannon, in the workshops of the military arsenal at Munich, I was struck with the very considerable degree of Heat which a brass gun acquires, in a short time, in being bored; and with the still more intense Heat (much greater than that of boiling water, as I found by experiment) of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer…

From whence comes the Heat actually produced in the mechanical operation above mentioned?

Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by the borer from the solid mass of metal?

If this were the case, then, according to the modern doctrines of latent Heat, and of caloric, the capacity ought not only to be changed, but the change undergone by them should be sufficiently great to account for all the Heat produced.

But no such change had taken place; for I found, upon taking equal quantities, by weight, of these chips, and of thin slips of the same block of metal separated by means of a fine saw and putting them, at the same temperature (that of boiling water), into equal quantities of cold water (that is to say, at the temperature of 59° F.) the portion of water into which the chips were put was not, to all appearance, heated either less or more than the other portion, in which the slips of metal were put.

Finally we reach his conclusion:

And, in reasoning on this subject, we must not forget to consider that most remarkable circumstance, that the source of the Heat generated by friction, in these Experiments, appeared evidently to be inexhaustible.

It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything, capable of being excited and communicated, in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated in these Experiments, except it be MOTION.

Thus we see the breakdown of the old theory, or to be more exact, we see that the substance theory is limited to problems of heat flow. Again, as Rumford has intimated, we must seek a new clue. To do this, let us leave for the moment the problem of heat and return to mechanics.

According to Rumford, heat was created by motion.

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FINAL COMMENTS

Temperature may be compared to the level of fluid, whereas, heat may be compared to the amount of fluid. Or, temperature may be compared to velocity, whereas, heat may be compared to mass. But these are analogies only.

On the other hand, substance is anything that is substantial. Substance is recognized by its force or the effect it creates. Heat is a substance in the sense that it consists of force that creates effect. Heat is not created but converted from another form of force.

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