heat, energy that is transferred from one body to another as the result of a difference

in temperature. If two bodies at different temperatures are brought together, energy

is transferred—i.e., heat flows—from the hotter body to the colder. The effect of this
transfer of energy usually, but not always, is an increase in the temperature of the
colder body and a decrease in the temperature of the hotter body. A substance may
absorb heat without an increase in temperature by changing from one physical state
(or phase) to another, as from a solid to a liquid (melting), from a solid to a vapour
(sublimation), from a liquid to a vapour (boiling), or from one solid form to another
(usually called a crystalline transition). The important distinction between heat and
temperature (heat being a form of energy and temperature a measure of the amount
of that energy present in a body) was clarified during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Heat as a form of energy

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Because all of the many forms of energy, including heat, can be converted into work,
amounts of energy are expressed in units of work, such as joules, foot-pounds,
kilowatt-hours, or calories. Exact relationships exist between the amounts of heat
added to or removed from a body and the magnitude of the effects on the state of the
body. The two units of heat most commonly used are the calorie and the British
thermal unit (BTU). The calorie (or gram-calorie) is the amount of energy required to
raise the temperature of one gram of water from 14.5 to 15.5 °C; the BTU is the
amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water from 63 to
64 °F. One BTU is approximately 252 calories. Both definitions specify that the
temperature changes are to be measured at a constant pressure of one atmosphere,
because the amounts of energy involved depend in part on pressure. The calorie used
in measuring the energy content of foods is the large calorie, or kilogram-calorie,
equal to 1,000 gram-calories.
In general, the amount of energy required to raise a unit mass of a substance through
a specified temperature interval is called the heat capacity, or the specific heat, of
that substance. The quantity of energy necessary to raise the temperature of a body
one degree varies depending upon the restraints imposed. If heat is added to a gas
confined at constant volume, the amount of heat needed to cause a one-degree
temperature rise is less than if the heat is added to the same gas free to expand (as in
a cylinder fitted with a movable piston) and so do work. In the first case, all the
energy goes into raising the temperature of the gas, but in the second case, the
energy not only contributes to the temperature increase of the gas but also provides
the energy necessary for the work done by the gas on the piston. Consequently, the
specific heat of a substance depends on these conditions. The most commonly
determined specific heats are the specific heat at constant volume and the specific
heat at constant pressure. The heat capacities of many solid elements were shown to
be closely related to their atomic weights by the French scientists Pierre-Louis
Dulong and Alexis-Thérèse Petit in 1819. The so-called law of Dulong and Petit was
useful in determining the atomic weights of certain metallic elements, but there are
many exceptions to it; the deviations were later found to be explainable on the basis
of quantum mechanics.
It is incorrect to speak of the heat in a body, because heat is restricted to energy
being transferred. Energy stored in a body is not heat (nor is it work, as work is also
energy in transit). It is customary, however, to speak of sensible and latent heat. The
latent heat, also called the heat of vaporization, is the amount of energy necessary to
change a liquid to a vapour at constant temperature and pressure. The energy
required to melt a solid to a liquid is called the heat of fusion, and the heat of
sublimation is the energy necessary to change a solid directly to a vapour, these
changes also taking place under conditions of constant temperature and pressure.

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Air is a mixture of gases and water vapour, and it is possible for the water present in
the air to change phase; i.e., it may become liquid (rain) or solid (snow). To
distinguish between the energy associated with the phase change (the latent heat)
and the energy required for a temperature change, the concept of sensible heat was
introduced. In a mixture of water vapour and air, the sensible heat is the energy
necessary to produce a particular temperature change excluding any energy required
for a phase change.

Heat transfer
Because heat is energy in transition, some discussion of the mechanisms involved is
pertinent. There are three modes of heat transfer, which can be described as (1) the
transfer of heat by conduction in solids or fluids at rest, (2) the transfer of heat by
convection in liquids or gases in a state of motion, combining conduction with fluid
flow, and (3) the transfer of heat by radiation, which takes place with no material
carrier. The flow of heat in metal bars was studied analytically by the French
mathematician Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier and measured by the French physicist
Jean-Baptiste Biot in 1816. The conductivity of water was first determined in 1839;
the conductivity of gases was not measured until after 1860. Biot formulated the laws
of conduction in 1804, and Fourier published a mathematical description of this
phenomenon in 1822. In 1803 it was found that infrared rays are reflected and
refracted as visible light is, and, thenceforth, the study of thermal radiation became
part of the study of radiation in general. In 1859 a physicist in Germany, Gustav
Robert Kirchhoff, presented his law of radiation, relating emissive power to
absorptivity. An Austrian, Josef Stefan, established the relationship (now called the
Stefan-Boltzmann law) between the energy radiated by a blackbody and the fourth
power of its temperature. Ludwig Boltzmann established the mathematical basis for
this law of radiation in 1884. It was in the study of radiation that Max Planck arrived
at the concept of the quantum. Understanding of heat transfer by convection was
developed during the period 1880–1920, although an equation describing such
processes had been suggested by Sir Isaac Newton in 1701.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by
Adam Augustyn.
cohesion

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cohesion, in physics, the intermolecular attractive force acting between two

adjacent portions of a substance, particularly of a solid or liquid. It is this force that
holds a piece of matter together. Intermolecular forces act also between two
dissimilar substances in contact, a phenomenon called adhesion. These forces
originate principally because of Coulomb (electrical) forces, like the van der Waals
forces. When two molecules are close together, they are repelled; when farther apart,
they are attracted; and when they are at an intermediate distance, their potential
energy is at a minimum, requiring the expenditure of work to either approximate or
separate them. Thus, work is required to pull apart two objects in intimate contact,
whether they be of the same or different material.
The attractive forces of cohesion and adhesion act over a short range and vary in
magnitude, depending on the substances concerned. If a piece of glass is submerged
in water and then withdrawn, it will be wet—i.e., water will cling to it, showing that
the force of adhesion between water and glass molecules is greater than the force of
cohesion between water molecules.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Erik Gregersen.
fluid

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Lord Rayleigh Osborne Reynolds

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Examine the properties of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids through demonstrations

involving honey and cornstarch
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fluid, any liquid or gas or generally any material that cannot sustain a tangential, or
shearing, force when at rest and that undergoes a continuous change in shape when
subjected to such a stress. This continuous and irrecoverable change of position of
one part of the material relative to another part when under shear stress constitutes
flow, a characteristic property of fluids. In contrast, the shearing forces within an
elastic solid, held in a twisted or flexed position, are maintained; the solid undergoes
no flow and can spring back to its original shape. (See deformation and flow.)
Compressed fluids can spring back to their original shape, too, but while
compression is maintained, the forces within the fluid and between the fluid and the
container are not shear forces. The fluid exerts an outward pressure, called
hydrostatic pressure, that is everywhere perpendicular to the surfaces of the
container.
Various simplifications, or models, of fluids have been devised since the last quarter
of the 18th century to analyze fluid flow. The simplest model, called a perfect, or
ideal, fluid, is one that is unable to conduct heat or to offer drag on the walls of a tube
or internal resistance to one portion flowing over another. Thus, a perfect fluid, even
while flowing, cannot sustain a tangential force; that is, it lacks viscosity and is also
referred to as an inviscid fluid. Some real fluids of low viscosity and heat conductivity
approach this behaviour.
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Fluids of which the viscosity, or internal friction, must be taken into account are
called viscous fluids and are further distinguished as Newtonian fluids if the viscosity
is constant for different rates of shear and does not change with time. The viscosity of
non-Newtonian fluids either varies with the rate of shear or varies with time, even
though the rate of shear is constant. Fluids in a class in this last category that become
thinner and less viscous as they continue to be stirred are called thixotropic fluids.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by
Amy Tikkanen.
lepton

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lepton, any member of a class of subatomic particles that respond only to the
electromagnetic force, weak force, and gravitational force and are not affected by the
strong force. Leptons are said to be elementary particles; that is, they do not appear
to be made up of smaller units of matter. Leptons can either carry one unit of electric
charge or be neutral. The charged leptons are the electrons, muons, and taus. Each of
these types has a negative charge and a distinct mass. Electrons, the lightest leptons,
have a mass only 1/1,840 that of a proton. Muons are heavier, having more than 200
times as much mass as electrons. Taus, in turn, are approximately 3,700 times more
massive than electrons. Each charged lepton has an associated neutral partner, or
neutrino (i.e., electron-, muon-, and tau-neutrino), that has no electric charge and no
significant mass. Moreover, all leptons, including the neutrinos, have antiparticles
called antileptons. The mass of the antileptons is identical to that of the leptons, but
all of the other properties are reversed.
A third characteristic feature of leptons, in addition to their charge and mass
properties, is their intrinsic angular momentum, or spin. Leptons are classified
within a larger group of subatomic particles, the fermions, which are characterized
by half-integer values of their spin. The total number of leptons appears to remain
the same in every particle reaction. Mathematically, total lepton number L (the
number of leptons minus the number of antileptons) is constant. In addition, a
conservation law for leptons of each type seems to hold; the number of electrons and
electron-neutrinos, for example, is conserved separately from the number of muons
and muon-neutrinos. The current limit of violation of this conservation law is one
part per million.
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This article was most recently revised and updated by Robert Curley.
quark

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• Quark “flavours”
• Quark “colours”
• Binding forces and “massive” quarks

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quark
subatomic particle
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Key People:

Murray Gell-Mann Henry Way Kendall David Gross Frank Wilczek H. David Politzer

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quantum chromodynamics charm quark down quark antiquark bottom quark

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Summary

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quark, any member of a group of elementary subatomic particles that interact by
means of the strong force and are believed to be among the fundamental constituents
of matter. Quarks associate with one another via the strong force to make up protons
and neutrons, in much the same way that the latter particles combine in various
proportions to make up atomic nuclei. There are six types, or flavours, of quarks that
differ from one another in their mass and charge characteristics. These six quark
flavours can be grouped in three pairs: up and down, charm and strange, and top and
bottom. Quarks appear to be true elementary particles; that is, they have no apparent
structure and cannot be resolved into something smaller. In addition, however,
quarks always seem to occur in combination with other quarks or with antiquarks,
their antiparticles, to form all hadrons—the so-called strongly interacting particles
that encompass both baryons and mesons.
Quarks*

quark baryon strangen bottom* mass

charge charm** top**
type number ess** * (MeV)

*Note that antiquarks exist for all flavours of quark and have opposite values for all the quantum
numbers listed here.
 **These are quantum numbers that must be assigned to the quarks to differentiate the various
flavours.

down (d) 1/3 −(1/3)e 0 0 0 0 5–15

up (u) 1/3 +(2/3)e 0 0 0 0 2–8

strange
1/3 −(1/3)e −1 0 0 0 100–300
(s)

1,000–
charm (c) 1/3 +(2/3)e 0 1 0 0
1,600

bottom 4,100–
1/3 −(1/3)e 0 0 −1 0
(b) 4,500

top (t) 1/3 +(2/3)e 0 0 0 1 180,000

Quark “flavours”
Throughout the 1960s theoretical physicists, trying to account for the ever-growing
number of subatomic particles observed in experiments, considered the possibility
that protons and neutrons were composed of smaller units of matter. In 1961 two
physicists, Murray Gell-Mann of the United States and Yuval Neʾeman of Israel,
proposed a particle classification scheme called the Eightfold Way, based on the
mathematical symmetry group SU(3), which described strongly interacting particles
in terms of building blocks. In 1964 Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as a
physical basis for the scheme, having adopted the fanciful term from a passage in
James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake. (The American physicist George Zweig
developed a similar theory independently that same year and called his fundamental
particles “aces.”) Gell-Mann’s model provided a simple picture in which all mesons
are shown as consisting of a quark and an antiquark and all baryons as composed of
three quarks. It postulated the existence of three types of quarks, distinguished by
unique “flavours.” These three quark types are now commonly designated as “up”
(u), “down” (d), and “strange” (s). Each carries a fractional value of the electron
charge (i.e., a charge less than that of the electron, e). The up quark (charge 2/3e) and
down quark (charge −1/3e) make up protons and neutrons and are thus the ones
observed in ordinary matter. Strange quarks (charge −1/3e) occur as components of K
mesons and various other extremely short-lived subatomic particles that were first
observed in cosmic rays but that play no part in ordinary matter.
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Quark “colours”
The interpretation of quarks as actual physical entities initially posed two major
problems. First, quarks had to have half-integer spin (intrinsic angular momentum)
values for the model to work, but at the same time they seemed to violate the Pauli
exclusion principle, which governs the behaviour of all particles (called fermions)
having odd half-integer spin. In many of the baryon configurations constructed of
quarks, sometimes two or even three identical quarks had to be set in the same
quantum state—an arrangement prohibited by the exclusion principle. Second,
quarks appeared to defy being freed from the particles they made up. Although the
forces binding quarks were strong, it seemed improbable that they were powerful
enough to withstand bombardment by high-energy particle beams from accelerators.
These problems were resolved by the introduction of the concept of colour, as
formulated in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this theory of strong
interactions, whose breakthrough ideas were published in 1973, colour has nothing
to do with the colours of the everyday world but rather represents a property of
quarks that is the source of the strong force. The colours red, green, and blue are
ascribed to quarks, and their opposites, antired, antigreen, and antiblue, are ascribed
to antiquarks. According to QCD, all combinations of quarks must contain mixtures
of these imaginary colours that cancel out one another, with the resulting particle
having no net colour. A baryon, for example, always consists of a combination of one
red, one green, and one blue quark and so never violates the exclusion principle. The
property of colour in the strong force plays a role analogous to that of electric charge
in the electromagnetic force, and just as charge implies the exchange of photons
between charged particles, so does colour involve the exchange of massless particles
called gluons among quarks. Just as photons carry electromagnetic force, gluons
transmit the forces that bind quarks together. Quarks change their colour as they
emit and absorb gluons, and the exchange of gluons maintains proper quark colour
distribution.
Binding forces and “massive” quarks
The binding forces carried by the gluons tend to be weak when quarks are close
together. Within a proton (or other hadron), at distances of less than 10−15 metre,
quarks behave as though they were nearly free. This condition is called asymptotic
freedom. When one begins to draw the quarks apart, however, as when attempting to
knock them out of a proton, the effect of the force grows stronger. This is because, as
explained by QCD, gluons have the ability to create other gluons as they move
between quarks. Thus, if a quark starts to speed away from its companions after
being struck by an accelerated particle, the gluons utilize energy that they draw from
the quark’s motion to produce more gluons. The larger the number of gluons
exchanged among quarks, the stronger the effective binding forces become.
Supplying additional energy to extract the quark only results in the conversion of
that energy into new quarks and antiquarks with which the first quark combines.
This phenomenon is observed at high-energy particle accelerators in the production
of “jets” of new particles that can be associated with a single quark.
The discovery in the 1970s of the “charm” (c) and “bottom” (b) quarks and their
associated antiquarks, achieved through the creation of mesons, strongly suggests
that quarks occur in pairs. This speculation led to efforts to find a sixth type of quark
called “top” (t), after its proposed flavour. According to theory, the top quark carries
a charge of 2/3e; its partner, the bottom quark, has a charge of − 1/3e. In 1995 two
independent groups of scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
reported that they had found the top quark. Their results give the top quark a mass of
173.8 ± 5.2 gigaelectron volts (GeV; 109 eV). (The next heaviest quark, the bottom,
has a mass of about 4.2 GeV.) It has yet to be explained why the top quark is so much
more massive than the other elementary particles, but its existence completes the
Standard Model, the prevailing theoretical scheme of nature’s fundamental building
blocks.