In the year 1656, a man named Robert Boyle who is from Ireland came up with one idea called an air pump which was used for pushing air into machines. He did it with a friend of his known as Robert Hooke who is from England. The idea was so good that it also inspired some smart people.
Out of those smart people who came up with their own ideas for creating things after Robert Boyle’s, a French man named Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot was the smartest. He wrote a book in 1824 titled ‘Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire’. His book was the beginning of something called ‘thermodynamics’. That’s why he is very well known as ‘Sadi Carnot: The Father of Thermodynamics’. Although he made many people to start seeing a lot of things that can be possible in how machines work and affect our lives, 30 years later, ‘thermodynamics’, as a name, was actually given by someone else who had read his book.
In 1854, William Thomson who is from Northern Ireland, after reading and understanding Sadi Carnot’s book, added some ideas of his own with what he wrote in his paper titled ‘On the Dynamical Theory of Heat’ and called everything he learned from it ‘thermo-dynamics’.
Note this. William Thomson combined two words ‘thermo’ and ‘dynamics’ to form ‘thermo-dynamics’. We can continue from there. ‘Thermo’ has to do with always knowing about something called ‘heat’ which shows us how hot or warm a thing, a person and a place can feel at different times like morning, afternoon and night. ‘Dynamics’ shows us a thing called motion which also means movement from one place to another. As an example, while you were still sleeping very early in the morning, your parents had already done a lot for you. They prepared breakfast in the kitchen with the cooker, used an electric kettle to get some boiled water for you to bathe, woke you up and helped you to do every other thing quickly. By the time you were ready, the school bus was already waiting for you in front of your house. You said “goodbye” to your mom and dad and got into the school bus to join the driver, some of your classmates and teachers. On the way to school, you played a bit with some of your classmates. The school bus eventually took you, your classmates and teachers to school on time. From the moment your parents woke you up to your arrival in school, everything you, your classmates, teachers, school bus’ driver and even the school bus did was mostly thermodynamics. With our explanation, thermodynamics is the study of how heat, energy and motion are connected.
Thermodynamics has 3 laws which are written points for us to always understand it correctly. The 1st law of thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is because energy keeps changing according to how it is needed.
Remember your sweet breakfast. It gave your body the kinetic energy for you to move around, carry your plates to the kitchen and quickly pick up your schoolbag when it was time for school. The energy has always been inside the ingredients before your breakfast was prepared.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics says entropy {a disorder from something with an organized pattern} always increases and makes heat to flow from a hotter place to a cooler one. If they turn off the air conditioner of your school bus on a hot day, sooner or later, everyone inside will start feeling hot. This is because the heat from the weather flows into your school bus.
The 3rd law of thermodynamics says a pure crystal’s entropy at absolute zero is zero. If you have a very clean and perfectly ordered crystal that is frozen, it will remain the same except something unusual happens to it. This is because, in most cases, anything can happen.
Source: https://dareyoyeledun.tumblr.com/post/659549491120259072/thermodynamics-for-a-ten-year-old
