Almost exactly 200 years ago, French physicist Sadi Carnot determined the maximum efficiency of heat engines. The Carnot ...

One famous limit of thermodynamics is that heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, must be less efficient than a Carnot heat engine (a heat engine cycle designed by French ...

For two centuries, students have learned that heat flows and engines work according to rigid limits that no machine can beat.

ON p. 326 of NATURE for August 29 appears an abstract of a paper by Dr. J. S. Haldane, which he read before the Institution of Mining Engineers on June 16. In this paper he has “thrown to the winds” ...

THE cycle proposed by Dr. J. S. Haldane (NATURE, August 29, p. 326) as a standard of comparison for steam engine performance can be shown quite readily on a temperature-entropy chart, and thus be ...

Nearly 70 percent of the energy produced in the United States each year is wasted as heat. Much of that heat is less than 100 degrees Celsius and emanates from things like computers, cars or large ...