Energy of Matter, Revised Edition

Joseph Angelo

Description

Energy of Matter, Revised Edition presents the most important intellectual achievements and technical developments that led people to use matter's energy content more efficiently. Supported by full-color illustrations, this updated reference describes the transformation of matter into energy and vice versa. This reference emphasizes the historical context in which major energy development milestones occurred.

Energy of Matter, Revised Edition has been designed to help any student or teacher with an interest in the energy mysteries of matter, the relationship between matter and energy, how scientists measure and characterize energy, and how the knowledge and use of energy shaped the course of human civilization.

Chapters include:

• Understanding Energy


• The Big Bang—Source of All Energy and Matter


• The Energy of Motion


• Discovering the Nature of Heat


• Thermodynamics


• Harvesting Energy Locked in Fossil Fuels


• Manipulating Matter's Electromagnetic Properties


• Discovering Equivalence of Energy and Matter


• Renewable Energy Resources


• Hydrogen—The Fuel of Tomorrow.

Sujets

• Chimie
• Science
• Discovery
• Research
• Elements
• Énergie
• Chemistry
• Element
• Energy
• Physics
• Matter
• Sciences et techniques

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438195803
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Energy of Matter, Revised Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Joseph A. Angelo, Jr.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Facts On File An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-9580-3
You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Chapters Understanding Energy The Big Bang—Source of All Energy and Matter The Energy of Motion Discovering the Nature of Heat Thermodynamics Harvesting Energy Locked in Fossil Fuels Manipulating Matter s Electromagnetic Properties Discovering the Equivalence of Energy and Matter Renewable Energy Resources Hydrogen—The Fuel of Tomorrow Conclusion Support Materials Chronology Glossary Further Resources Index
Preface
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking. —Albert Einstein
Humankind's global civilization relies upon a family of advanced technologies that allow people to perform clever manipulations of matter and energy in a variety of interesting ways. Contemporary matter manipulations hold out the promise of a golden era for humankind—an era in which most people are free from the threat of such natural perils as thirst, starvation, and disease. But matter manipulations, if performed unwisely or improperly on a large scale, can also have an apocalyptic impact. History is filled with stories of ancient societies that collapsed because local material resources were overexploited or unwisely used. In the extreme, any similar follies by people on a global scale during this century could imperil not only the human species but all life on Earth.
Despite the importance of intelligent stewardship of Earth's resources, many people lack sufficient appreciation for how matter influences their daily lives. The overarching goal of States of Matter is to explain the important role matter plays throughout the entire domain of nature—both here on Earth and everywhere in the universe. The comprehensive multivolume set is designed to raise and answer intriguing questions and to help readers understand matter in all its interesting states and forms—from common to exotic, from abundant to scarce, from here on Earth to the fringes of the observable universe.
The subject of matter is filled with intriguing mysteries and paradoxes. Take two highly flammable gases, hydrogen (H 2 ) and oxygen (O 2 ), carefully combine them, add a spark, and suddenly an exothermic reaction takes place yielding not only energy but also an interesting new substance called water (H 2 O). Water is an excellent substance to quench a fire, but it is also an incredibly intriguing material that is necessary for all life here on Earth—and probably elsewhere in the universe.
Matter is all around us and involves everything tangible a person sees, feels, and touches. The flow of water throughout Earth's biosphere, the air people breathe, and the ground they stand on are examples of the most commonly encountered states of matter. This daily personal encounter with matter in its liquid, gaseous, and solid states has intrigued human beings from the dawn of history. One early line of inquiry concerning the science of matter (that is, matter science ) resulted in the classic earth, air, water, and fire elemental philosophy of the ancient Greeks. This early theory of matter trickled down through history and essentially ruled Western thought until the Scientific Revolution.
It was not until the late 16th century and the start of the Scientific Revolution that the true nature of matter and its relationship with energy began to emerge. People started to quantify the properties of matter and to discover a series of interesting relationships through carefully performed and well-documented experiments. Speculation, philosophical conjecture, and alchemy gave way to the scientific method, with its organized investigation of the material world and natural phenomena.
Collectively, the story of this magnificent intellectual unfolding represents one of the great cultural legacies in human history—comparable to the control of fire and the invention of the alphabet. The intellectual curiosity and hard work of the early scientists throughout the Scientific Revolution set the human race on a trajectory of discovery, a trajectory that not only enabled today's global civilization but also opened up the entire universe to understanding and exploration.
In a curious historical paradox, most early peoples, including the ancient Greeks, knew a number of fundamental facts about matter (in its solid, liquid, and gaseous states), but these same peoples generally made surprisingly little scientific progress toward unraveling matter's inner mysteries. The art of metallurgy, for example, was developed some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago on an essentially trial-and-error basis, thrusting early civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea into first the Bronze Age and later the Iron Age. Better weapons (such as metal swords and shields) were the primary social catalyst for technical progress, yet the periodic table of chemical elements (of which metals represent the majority of entries) was not envisioned until the 19th century.
Starting in the late 16th century, inquisitive individuals, such as the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, performed careful observations and measurements to support more organized inquiries into the workings of the natural world. As a consequence of these observations and experiments, the nature of matter became better understood and better quantified. Scientists introduced the concepts of density, pressure, and temperature in their efforts to more consistently describe matter on a large (or macroscopic) scale. As instruments improved, scientists were able to make even better measurements, and soon matter became more clearly understood on both a macroscopic and microscopic scale. Starting in the 20th century, scientists began to observe and measure the long-hidden inner nature of matter on the atomic and subatomic scales.
Actually, intellectual inquiry into the microscopic nature of matter has its roots in ancient Greece. Not all ancient Greek philosophers were content with the prevailing earth-air-water-fire model of matter. About 450 B.C.E., a Greek philosopher named Leucippus and his more well-known student Democritus introduced the notion that all matter is actually composed of tiny solid particles, which are atomos (ατομος), or indivisible. Unfortunately, this brilliant insight into the natural order of things lay essentially unnoticed for centuries. In the early 1800s, a British schoolteacher named John Dalton began tinkering with mixtures of gases and made the daring assumption that a chemical element consisted of identical indestructible atoms. His efforts revived atomism. Several years later, the Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro announced a remarkable hypothesis, a bold postulation that paved the way for the atomic theory of chemistry. Although this hypothesis was not widely accepted until the second half of the 19th century, it helped set the stage for the spectacular revolution in matter science that started as the 19th century rolled into the 20th.
What lay ahead was not just the development of an atomistic kinetic theory of matter, but the experimental discovery of electrons, radioactivity, the nuclear atom, protons, neutrons, and quarks. Not to be outdone by the nuclear scientists, who explored nature on the minutest scale, astrophysicists began describing exotic states of matter on the grandest of cosmic scales. The notion of degenerate matter appeared as well as the hypothesis that supermassive black holes lurked at the centers of most large galaxies after devouring the masses of millions of stars. Today, cosmologists and astrophysicists describe matter as being clumped into enormous clusters and superclusters of galaxies. The quest for these scientists is to explain how the observable universe, consisting of understandable forms of matter and energy, is also immersed in and influenced by mysterious forms of matter and energy, called dark matter and dark energy, respectively.
The study of matter stretches from prehistoric obsidian tools to contemporary research efforts in nanotechnology. States of Matter provides 9th- to 12th-grade audiences with an exciting and unparalleled adventure into the physical realm and applications of matter. This journey in search of the meaning of substance ranges from everyday "touch, feel, and see" items (such as steel, talc, concrete, water, and air) to the tiny, invisible atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles that govern the behavior and physical characteristics of every element, compound, and mixture, not only here on Earth, but everywhere in the universe.
Today, scientists recognize several other states of matter in addition to the solid, liquid, and gas states known to exist since ancient times. These include very hot plasmas and extremely cold Bose-Einstein condensates. Scientists also study very exotic forms of matter, such as liquid helium (which behaves as a superfluid does), superconductors, and quark-gluon plasmas. Astronomers and astrophysicists refer to degenerate matter when they discuss white dwarf stars and neutron stars. Other unusual forms of matter under investigation include antimatter and dark matter. Perhaps most challenging of all for scientists in this century is to grasp the true nature of dark energy and understand how it influences all matter in the universe. Using the national science education standards for 9th- to 12th-grade readers as an overarching guide, the States of Matter set provides a clear, carefully selected, well-integrated, and enjoyable tre