Abstract
IN NATURE, April 30, 1903, there is an article entitled “Entropy,” describing at some length the great practical use which the engineer now makes of the tφ diagram. Engineers very ignorant of mathematics are able with clearness and certainty to make quantitative computations such as used to task the powers of mathematicians. The problems so easily worked out are very numerous and of a useful, interesting character, and mistakes are not easily made. On the other side of this question, in a notice of Mr. Donkin's translation of Prof. Boulvin's “The Entropy Diagram and its Applications” (NATURE, May 4, 1899), it was pointed out that such books were doing much harm because they made an illegitimate use of the tφ diagram. Thus I say:—“Of course we may, if we please, say that when steam is released to the condenser, we may imagine the whole change as occurring in the cylinder itself; only we ought to remember that we are substituting a very simple hypothetical process for a very complicated reality, which has almost nothing in common with it. We ought to remember that the very pretty, beautifully complete, cyclic tπ diagrams, which we obtain from childish assumptions, may get to be looked upon by students, and even by ourselves, as having a real meaning.”
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PERRY, J. Entropy 1 . Nature 69, 561–564 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/069561a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/069561a0