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Besides the caloric theory, another theory existed in the late eighteenth century that could explain the phenomenon of heat: the kinetic theory. The two theories were considered to be equivalent at the time, but kinetic theory was the more modern one, as it used a few ideas from atomic theory and could explain both combustion and calorimetry ...
Joule's apparatus for measuring the mechanical equivalent of heat. Most established scientists, such as William Henry, [13] as well as Thomas Thomson, believed that there was enough uncertainty in the caloric theory to allow its adaptation to account for the new results. It had certainly proved robust and adaptable up to that time.
The utility and explanatory power of kinetic theory, however, soon started to displace the caloric theory. Nevertheless, William Thomson, for example, was still trying to explain James Joule's observations within a caloric framework as late as 1850. The caloric theory was largely obsolete by the end of the 19th century.
Speculation on 'heat' as a separate form of matter has a long history, involving the phlogiston theory, the caloric theory, and fire. Many careful and accurate historical experiments practically exclude friction, mechanical and thermodynamic work and matter transfer, investigating transfer of energy only by thermal conduction and radiation.
Joule's more exact measurements on equivalence were pivotal in establishing the kinetic theory at the expense of the caloric theory. The idea that heat and work are equivalent was also proposed by Julius Robert von Mayer in 1842 in the leading German physics journal and independently by James Prescott Joule in 1843, in the leading British ...
1798 – Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) publishes his paper An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction detailing measurements of the frictional heat generated in boring cannons and develops the idea that heat is a form of kinetic energy; his measurements are inconsistent with caloric theory, but ...
Caloric theory had dominated thinking in the science of heat since introduced by Antoine Lavoisier in 1783. Lavoisier's prestige and the practical success of Sadi Carnot 's caloric theory of the heat engine since 1824 ensured that the young Joule, working outside either academia or the engineering profession, had a difficult road ahead.
Thermal physics, generally speaking, is the study of the statistical nature of physical systems from an energetic perspective. Starting with the basics of heat and temperature, thermal physics analyzes the first law of thermodynamics and second law of thermodynamics from the statistical perspective, in terms of the number of microstates corresponding to a given macrostate.