James Clerk Maxwell and the geometrical figure with which he proved his famous thermodynamic relations
Historical background
Every student of thermodynamics sooner or later encounters the Maxwell relations – an extremely useful set of statements of equality among partial derivatives, principally involving the state variables P, V, T and S. They are general thermodynamic relations valid for all systems.
The four relations originally stated by Maxwell are easily derived from the (exact) differential relations of the thermodynamic potentials:
dU = TdS – PdV ⇒ (∂T/∂V)S = –(∂P/∂S)V
dH = TdS + VdP ⇒ (∂T/∂P)S = (∂V/∂S)P
dG = –SdT + VdP ⇒ –(∂S/∂P)T = (∂V/∂T)P
dA = –SdT – PdV ⇒ (∂S/∂V)T = (∂P/∂T)V
This is how we obtain these Maxwell relations today, but it disguises the history of their discovery. The thermodynamic state functions H, G and A were yet to be created when Maxwell published the above relations in his 1871 textbook Theory of Heat. The startling fact is that Maxwell navigated his way to these relations using nothing more than a diagram of the Carnot cycle, allied to an ingenious exercise in plane geometry.
Another historical truth that modern derivations conceal is that entropy did not feature as the conjugate variable to temperature (θ) in Maxwell’s original relations; instead Maxwell used Rankine’s thermodynamic function (Φ) which is identical with – and predates – the state function entropy (S) introduced by Clausius in 1865.
Maxwell’s use of Φ instead of S was not a matter of personal preference. It could not have been otherwise, because Maxwell misunderstood the term entropy at the time when he wrote his book (1871), believing it to represent the available energy of a system. From a dimensional perspective – and one must remember that Maxwell was one of the founders of dimensional analysis – it was impossible for entropy as he understood it to be the conjugate variable to temperature. By contrast, it was clear to Maxwell that Rankine’s Φ had the requisite dimensions of ML2T-2θ-1.
Two years later, in an 1873 publication entitled A method of geometrical representation of the thermodynamic properties of substances by means of surfaces, the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs politely pointed out Maxwell’s error in regard to the units of measurement of entropy:
Maxwell responded in a subsequent edition of Theory of Heat with a contrite apology for misleading his readers:
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Carnot Cycle revisited
The centrepiece of the geometrical construction with which Maxwell proves his thermodynamic relations is a quadrilateral drawn 37 years earlier by Émile Clapeyron in his 1834 paper Mémoire sur la Puissance Motrice de la Chaleur (Memoir on the motive power of heat).
When Émile Clapeyron drew this PV-plane representation of the Carnot cycle in 1834, heat was believed to be a conserved quantity. By the time Maxwell used the diagram in 1871, heat and work were understood to be interconvertible forms of energy, with energy being the conserved quantity.
This is the first analytical representation of the Carnot cycle, shown as a closed curve on a pressure-volume indicator diagram. The sides ab and cd represent isothermal lines, the sides ad and bc adiabatic lines. By assigning infinitely small values to the variations of volume and pressure during the successive operations of the cycle, Clapeyron renders this quadrilateral a parallelogram.
The area enclosed by the curve equates to the work done in a complete cycle, and Maxwell uses the following contrivance to set this area equal to unity.
Applying Carnot’s principle, Maxwell expresses the work W done as a function of the heat H supplied
W = H(T2 – T1)/T2
with T2 and T1 representing the absolute temperatures of the source and sink respectively.
Maxwell then defines
T2 – T1 = 1
H/T2 = 1
The conversion of heat into work is thus expressed as the product of a unit change in temperature T and a unit change in Rankine’s thermodynamic function Φ, equivalent to entropy S:
W = Δ1T . Δ1S = 1
Maxwell’s definitions also give the parallelogram the property that any line drawn from one isothermal line to the other, or from one adiabatic line to the other, is of unit length when reckoned in the respective dimensions of temperature or entropy. This is of central significance to what follows.
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Geometrical extensions
Maxwell’s geometric machinations consist in extending the isothermal (T1T2) and adiabatic lines (Φ1Φ2) of the original figure ABCD and adding vertical lines (pressure) and horizontal lines (volume) to create four further parallelograms with the aim of proving their areas also equal to unity, while at the same time enabling each of these areas to be expressed in terms of pressure and volume as a base-altitude product.
As the image from Theory of Heat shown at the head of this article reveals, Maxwell did not fully trace out the perimeters of three (!) of the four added parallelograms. I have extended four lines to the arbitrarily labelled points E, F and H in order to complete the figure.
– parallelogram AKQD stands on the same base AD as ABCD and lies between the same parallels T1T2 so its area is also unity, expressible in terms of volume and pressure as the base-altitude product AK.Ak
– parallelogram ABEL stands on the same base AB as ABCD and lies between the same parallels Φ1Φ2 so its area is also unity, expressible in terms of volume and pressure as the base-altitude product AL.Al
– parallelogram AMFD stands on the same base AD as ABCD and lies between the same parallels T1T2 so its area is also unity, expressible in terms of pressure and volume as the base-altitude product AM.Am
– parallelogram ABHN stands on the same base AB as ABCD and lies between the same parallels Φ1Φ2 so its area is also unity, expressible in terms of pressure and volume as the base-altitude product AN.An
– line AD, which represents a unit rise in entropy at constant temperature, resolves into the vertical (pressure) and horizontal (volume) components Ak and Am
– line AB, which represents a unit rise in temperature at constant entropy, resolves into the vertical (pressure) and horizontal (volume) components Al and An
– in summary: ABCD = AK.Ak = AL.Al = AM.Am = AN.An = 1 [dimensions ML2T-2]
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Maxwell’s thermodynamic relations
Maxwell’s next step is to interpret the physical meaning of these four pairs of lines.
AK is the volume increase per unit rise in temperature at constant pressure: (∂V/∂T)P
Ak is the pressure decrease per unit rise in entropy at constant temperature: –(∂P/∂S)T
Recalling the property of partial derivatives that given the implicit function f(x,y,z) = 0
Since AK = 1/Ak
(∂V/∂T)P = –(∂S/∂P)T
AL is the volume increase per unit rise in entropy at constant pressure: (∂V/∂S)P
Al is the pressure increase per unit rise in temperature at constant entropy: (∂P/∂T)S
Since AL = 1/Al
(∂V/∂S)P = (∂T/∂P)S
AM is the pressure increase per unit rise in temperature at constant volume: (∂P/∂T)V
Am is the volume increase per unit rise in entropy at constant temperature: (∂V/∂S)T
Since AM = 1/Am
(∂P/∂T)V = (∂S/∂V)T
AN is the pressure increase per unit rise in entropy at constant volume: (∂P/∂S)V
An is the volume decrease per unit rise in temperature at constant entropy: –(∂V/∂T)S
Since AN = 1/An
(∂P/∂S)V = –(∂T/∂V)S
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In his own words
I leave it to the man himself to conclude this post:
“We have thus obtained four relations among the physical properties of the substance. These four relations are not independent of each other, so as to rank as separate truths. Any one might be deduced from any other. The equality of the products AK, Ak &c., to the parallelogram ABCD and to each other is merely a geometrical truth, and does not depend on thermodynamic principles. What we learn from thermodynamics is that the parallelogram and the four products are each equal to unity, whatever be the nature of the substance or its condition as to pressure and temperature.”
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P Mander August 2014
carnotcycle 
Reblogged this on nebusresearch and commented:
I should mention — I should have mentioned earlier, but it has been a busy week — that CarnotCycle has published the second part of “The Geometry of Thermodynamics”. This is a bit of a tougher read than the first part, admittedly, but it’s still worth reading. The essay reviews how James Clerk Maxwell — yes, that Maxwell — developed the thermodynamic relationships that would have made him famous in physics if it weren’t for his work in electromagnetism that ultimately overthrew the Newtonian paradigm of space and time.
The ingenious thing is that the best part of this work is done on geometric grounds, on thinking of the spatial relationships between quantities that describe how a system moves heat around. “Spatial” may seem a strange word to describe this since we’re talking about things that don’t have any direct physical presence, like “temperature” and “entropy”. But if you draw pictures of how these quantities relate to one another, you have curves and parallelograms and figures that follow the same rules of how things fit together that you’re used to from ordinary everyday objects.
A wonderful side point is a touch of human fallibility from a great mind: in working out his relations, Maxwell misunderstood just what was meant by “entropy”, and needed correction by the at-least-as-great Josiah Willard Gibbs. Many people don’t quite know what to make of entropy even today, and Maxwell was working when the word was barely a generation away from being coined, so it’s quite reasonable he might not understand a term that was relatively new and still getting its precise definition. It’s surprising nevertheless to see.
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