Journal Article

2024 ‘Key Reflections’ on Sadi Carnot’s 1824 ‘Réflexions’ and 200 Year Legacy

Kostic, Milivoje M.

2025

Overview

This author is not a philosopher nor a historian of science, but an engineering thermodynamicist. In that regard, and in addition to various philosophical “why and how” treatises and existing historical analyses, the physical and logical “what it is” reflections, as sequential Key Points, where a key Sadi Carnot reasoning infers the next one, along with novel contributions and original generalizations, are presented. We need to keep in mind that in Sadi Carnot’s time (early 1800s), steam engines were inefficient (below 5%, so the heat in and out was comparable within experimental uncertainty, as if caloric were conserved), the conservation of caloric flourished (might be a fortunate misconception leading to the critical analogy with the waterwheel), and many critical thermal concepts, including the conservation of energy (The First Law), were not even established. If Clausius and Kelvin earned the title “Fathers of thermodynamics”, then Sadi Carnot was ‘the ingenious’ “Forefather of thermodynamics-to-become”.

• Publisher: MDPI AG,MDPI
• Subject: Analysis / Carnot cycle / Carnot, Nicolas-Leonard Sadi / Cognition & reasoning / contradiction impossibility / Criticism and interpretation / Efficiency / Energy conservation / Energy conservation law / heat engine / Heat engines / Heat transfer / High temperature / maximum engine efficiency / Physicists / reversibility / Sadi Carnot / Steam engines / Thermodynamics / Water wheels