Everything about Rudolf Clausius totally explained
Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (
January 2,
1822 –
August 24,
1888), was a
German physicist and
mathematician and is considered one of the central founders of the science of
thermodynamics. By his restatement of
Sadi Carnot's principle known as the
Carnot cycle, he put the
theory of heat on a truer and sounder basis. His most important paper, on the mechanical theory of heat, published in
1850, first stated the basic ideas of the
second law of thermodynamics. In
1865 he introduced the concept of
entropy.
Life
Clausius was born in
Köslin (now Koszalin) in the
Province of Pomerania. He started his education at the school of his father. After a few years, he went to the
Gymnasium in
Stettin (now Szczecin). Clausius graduated from the
University of Berlin in
1844 where he studied Mathematics and Physics with, among others,
Heinrich Magnus,
Johann Dirichlet and
Jakob Steiner. He also studied History with
Leopold von Ranke. In
1847, he got his doctorate from the
University of Halle on optical effects in the earth's atmosphere. He then became professor of physics at the Royal Artillery and Engineering School in Berlin and Privatdozent at the Berlin University. In
1855 he became professor at the
ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zürich, where he stayed until
1867. In that year, he moved to
Würzburg and two years later, in
1869 to
Bonn.
In
1870 Clausius organized an ambulance corps in the
Franco-Prussian War. He was wounded in battle, leaving him with a lasting disability. He was awarded the
Iron Cross for his services.
His wife, Adelheid Rimpham, died in childbirth in
1875, leaving him to raise their six children. He continued to teach, but had less time for research thereafter. Clausius died in
Bonn.
Work
Clausius' PhD thesis on the refraction of light proposed that we see a blue sky during the day, and various shades of red at sunrise and sunset (among other phenomena) due to reflection and refraction of light. Later,
Lord Rayleigh would show that it was in fact due to the scattering of light, but regardless, Clausius used a far more mathematical approach than his predecessors.
His most famous paper, "
Über die bewegende Kraft der Wärme" ("
On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom")
was published in
1850, and dealt with the mechanical theory of heat. In this paper, he showed that there was a contradiction between
Carnot's principle and the concept of
conservation of energy. Clausius restated the two
laws of thermodynamics to overcome this contradiction (the
third law was developed by
Walther Nernst, during the years 1906–1912). This paper caused his scientific career to take off.
In
1857, Clausius contributed to the field of
kinetic theory after refining
August Krönig's very simple gas-kinetic model to include translational, rotational and vibrational molecular motions. In this same work he introduced the concept of '
Mean free path' of a particle.
Clausius deduced the
Clausius-Clapeyron relation from
thermodynamics. This relation, which is a way of characterizing the
phase transition between two states of matter such as
solid and
liquid, had originally been developed in
1834 by
Émile Clapeyron.
Entropy
In 1865, Clausius first gave a mathematical version of the concept of
entropy, and gave it its name. He used the now abandoned unit 'Clausius' (symbol:
Cl) for entropy. It is important to note that Clausius chose the word "entropy" because the meaning, from Greek, en+tropein, is "
content transformative" or "
transformation content" ("
Verwandlungsinhalt").
» 1 Cl = 1
cal/
°C = 4.1868
joules per
kelvin (J/K)
Tributes
Quotes
The following are two famous quotes made by Clausius in 1865:
The energy of the universe is constant.
The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Rudolf Clausius'.
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