
On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Charles Babbage.
I learned about the Carnot cycle and its consequences teaching thermodynamics. Conscientiously following the textbooks, mainly because as teachers we are no longer allowed to deviate from them in order not to confuse the students. After a number of years I thought I had finally figured out the use and beauty of this cycle to introduce concepts like efficiency and entropy. Almost all textbooks follow the same ritual: introduce the cycle, “prove” how all reversible cycles must have the same efficiency regardless of working substance, and calculate the efficiency using the ideal classical gas isotherms and adiabats. Then finish the exercise by showing that if you integrate heat divided by temperature over the path of the cycle you get zero, and conclude that there is a state quantity, to be called entropy. Then make some remarks about irreversibility and Clausius, and continue on to the next topic. And I like to think that after a few years I could follow that ritual fairly well. Not that I was impressed by the level of student understanding come exam time, but hell, it is thermodynamics, nobody understands that. Fortunately the powers that be, and a lack of others wanting to teach something as arcane and useless as thermodynamics, left me in a position to yearly try to increase my knowledge and understanding of the field.
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