ABSTRACT
Thermodynamics governs the use of many of the engines by which we seek to influence our environment and to extract useful energy from it. Human life requires a body temperature confined to quite a narrow range, normally about 36 to 41 °C or 97 to 106 °F. The simple increase of increments on one temperature scale with the increments on the other scale, as represented by the straight line, is called ‘proportionality’. A maximum temperature was postulated in order to limit the number of particles which can occur in the theory, and was found to be in fair agreement with experiments performed to check its value. The earth receives energy from the sun and radiates energy into cold space, but the average temperatures of both remain roughly constant in a human lifetime. The chapter explains the idea of momentum of an object, because, like energy, it is subject to a conservation law.
