Latent Heat - History

History

The English word latent comes from Latin latēns, meaning lying hid. The term latent heat was introduced into calorimetry around 1750 by Joseph Black when studying system changes, such as of volume and pressure, when the thermodynamic system was held at constant temperature in a thermal bath. James Prescott Joule characterized latent energy as the energy of interaction in a given configuration of particles, i.e. a form of potential energy, and the sensible heat as an energy that was indicated by the thermometer, relating the latter to thermal energy.

Read more about this topic:  Latent Heat

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
    Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)