Thermodynamics the work of French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that engine efficiency was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars. Scots-Irish physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate a concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854 which stated, "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." The initial application of thermodynamics to mechanical heat engines was extended early on to the study of chemical compounds and chemical reactions. Chemical thermodynamics studies the nature of the role of
First law of thermodynamics (fluid mechanics) per unit mass equals proper energy per unit mass plus pressure times volume per unit mass (reciprocal of mass density). First law of thermodynamics (fluid mechanics) In physics, the first law of thermodynamics is an expression of the conservation of total energy of a system. The increase of the energy of a system is equal to the sum of work done on the system and the heat added to that system: where In fluid mechanics, the first law of thermodynamics takes the following form: where Because it expresses conservation of total energy, this is sometimes referred to as the energy