Historically, thermodynamics developed out of a desire to increase the efficiency of early steam engines, particularly through the work of French physicistNicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that the efficiency of heat engines was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars. Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate a concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854:
Thermo-dynamics is the subject of the relation of heat to forces acting between contiguous parts of bodies, and the relation of heat to electrical agency.
Syringe in some water (syringe supplied). Fill the little burner with methylated spirits and light it. Under a minute later you have a steam turbine running.
Designed and built to very high engineering standards in the UK, this turbine can reach speeds of 2500rpm. Its design is based on the original first steam turbine invented by Hero of Alexander around 2000 years ago but with some m..
A pressure hypsometer employs the principle that the boiling point of a liquid is lowered by diminishing the barometric pressure, and that the barometric pressure varies with the height of the point of observation.
The instrument consists of a cylindrical vessel in which the liquid, usually water, is boiled, surmounted by a jacketed column, in the outer partitions of which the vapour circul..
A Bunsen burner, named after Robert Bunsen, is a common piece of laboratory equipment that produces a single open gas flame, which is used for heating, sterilization, and combustion.
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Boyle's law (sometimes referred to as the Boyle-Mariotte law) is one of many gas laws and a special case of the ideal gas law. Boyle's law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. The law was named after ..
Charles' law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law which describes how gases tend to expand when heated. It was first published byFrench natural philosopher Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, although he credited the discovery to unpublished work from the 1780s by Jacques Charles. The law was independently dis..
A hydrometer is an instrument used to measure the specific gravity (or relative density) of liquids; that is, the ratio of the density of the liquid to the density of water.
A hydrometer is usually made of glass and consists of a cylindrical stem and a bulb weighted with mercury or lead shot to make it float upright. The liquid to be tested is poured into a tall container, often a graduated..
![4 Brass Gas Tap Unit [vintage]](http://curiousminds.co.uk/image/cache/data/Heat/Gas_Taps+Burners/DSC_0030-120x120.JPG "4 Brass Gas Tap Unit [vintage]")
