Heat Engine – The Original Hot Boy Band

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Read about the long lost history of Thermodynamics over at Lounge of the Lab Lemming. There you’ll find out about the 19th Century Boy Band Heat Engine, whose original membership was:

  • Rudolf Clausius: bass
  • Emile Clapeyron: percussion
  • Sadi Carnot: vocals
  • Hermann Helmholtz: calorimeter

… and much much more.

In this history, the laws of thermodynamics were motivated by the same old thing that motivates so many things, it seems: Attracting the opposite sex. Why am I not surprised?

-cvj

(Note: It is a (mostly) funny riff starting as a dig (or at least I interpret it as such) at the implication made by a ScienceBlogs blogger during an earlier blogfight that his self-image is somehow enhanced by his girlfriend’s high degree of “hotness” – however that is measured. I’ve not really been following who said what exactly, so I’ll point you to observations made by Jennifer Ouellette on the matter, where she’s made lots of links to the original material.)

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One Response to Heat Engine – The Original Hot Boy Band

  1. spyder says:
    December 27, 2006 at 10:55 am

    Must be something in the ether (19th century and all that) today, reading about Q ratios and hotness quotients. Stephen Laffoley writes:

    In 1842, German physiologist and physician, Wilhelm Ludwig put forward the radical ‘Ludwig’s Theory,’ which explained, in purely chemical and physiological terms, the simple function of the liver. Why was it considered a ‘radical’ theory? Because most people at that time still believed that the liver had a mystical ‘life force,’ which explained, to their latent medieval minds, the very wonder that was urine. Though it seems a trifling argument now, Ludwig’s Theory, medically and scientifically, was a forceful leap into the modern age of rational medical science.

    That said, some forty years later, in 1889, the Testicular Extract Theory – posed by French-American physician Charles Edouard Brown-Sequard – posited that the injection of liquefied guinea pig testicle under the skin of an aged man would invigorate his sexual drive and prowess.

    Mix one part mystical life force’s golden elixir, two parts TET from special little piggies living piggy lives, and apply to adolescent boy band members, wait for live performance (lip synched of course) and observe.