THE
PHYSICS OF HEAT ENGINES
Heat
Engine is defined as, “an engine in which the motive power is
produced by heat,
a thermodynamic engine.” Oxford English
Dictionary.
In
physics a heat engine is a system that converts
thermal energy to mechanical energy,
which can then be used
to do mechanical work.
Heat
engines are very important as they are what drove the industrial
revolution and
are behind everything today.
So,
what is the Physics behind Heat Engines?
Basically, as stated above a heat engine is a device that
transforms heat into work. The
part of the heat energy taken from the hot
reservoir is utilized as work and the remaining
is lost to the cold reservoir. So, we get the
following,
The
maximum possible efficiency of a heat engine working between
two different
temperatures is know as the Carnot
efficiency. No heat engine with efficiency greater than
Carnot’s efficiency can exist. The
expression for the maximum efficiency of a heat engine is,
To
sum up what we learned see the following diagram.
Here are some links to videos from other people on the topic of heat engines.
Video
Link (Crash Course)
Video
Link (Organic Chemistry)