In existographies, Alexis Petit (1791-1820) (CR:8) was a French physicist noted for []
Overview
In 1817, Petit, with Pierre Dulong, a French physical chemist, made some corrections of Newton's law of cooling. [1]
In 1818, Petit published work on the efficiencies of air-engines and steam-engines.
In 1819, Petit and Dulong discovered that the specific heat of any solid element multiplied by its atomic weight is approximately equal to a constant. [2] This has come to be known as the Dulong-Petit law for the specific heat capacity of metals.
Education
Petit studied at the École Polytechnique, graduating in 1811, later becoming professor of physics from 1815 to 1819.
Carnot
In thermodynamics, Petit is known to have had a discussion with French physicist Sadi Carnot on the subject of efficiency in engines, which may have influenced or stimulated the latter in his 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, with its famous derivation of the efficiency of heat engines in general. One of Petit’s noted students in physics, during the years 1815-16, was Auguste Comte, the French sociologist and philosopher who is generally credited with having coined the term sociology and who first outlined the subject of "social physics". Physics, for Comte, was his most difficult class, because, in his own words, Petit "went too fast". [3]
See also
● Pierre Petit
References
1. Whewell, William. (1866). History of the Inductive Sciences (section: “Correction of Newton’s law of cooling”, pgs. 149-50). Appleton.
2. Scerri, Eric R. (2007). The Periodic Table: its Story and its Significance (pgs. 59-60). Oxford University Press.
3. Pickering, Mary. (1993). Auguste Comte (pg. 24). Cambridge University Press.
External links
● Alexis Petit – Wikipedia.
● Alexis Therese Petit (biography) – Hak-vk.at.
