History
James Joule studied the relationship between heat, work, and temperature. He observed that if he did mechanical work on a fluid, such as water, by agitating the fluid, its temperature increased. He proposed that the mechanical work he was doing on the system was converted to thermal energy. Specifically, he found that 4185.5 joules of energy were needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.
Read more about this topic: Internal Energy
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