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Calorimetry

Determining heat transfer in a system by measuring its other properties

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Snellen direct calorimetry chamber, School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
D. Gordon E. Robertson · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Indirect calorimetry calculates heat that living organisms produce by measuring either their production of carbon dioxide and nitrogen waste (frequently ammonia in aquatic organisms, or urea in terrestrial ones), or from their consumption of oxygen. Lavoisier noted in 1780 that heat production can be predicted from oxygen consumption this way, using multiple regression. The dynamic energy budget theory explains why this procedure is correct. Heat generated by living organisms may also be measured by direct calorimetry, in which the entire organism is placed inside the calorimeter for the measurement.

A widely used modern instrument is the differential scanning calorimeter, a device which allows thermal data to be obtained on small amounts of material. It involves heating the sample at a controlled rate and recording the heat flow either into or from the specimen.

History

The concept of heat has intrigued scientists for more than 2500 years. In the Graeco-Roman era, Plato and Aristotle regarded heat as a manifestation of fire. Newton proposed that it was transmitted by vibrations of the particles of aether, while Descartes described it as an accelerated motion of air particles induced by light. Robert Hooke viewed heat as a property of matter arising from the motion of its parts. For centuries, the prevailing theory imagined heat as a self-repelling, weightless fluid called "caloric".

The measurement of heat began to take shape about three centuries ago. In 1750, Georg Wilhelm Richmann formulated the first general calorimetric equation, later known as Richmann's law, allowing calculation of the equilibrium temperature of mixed substances of the same kind. A decade later, Joseph Black made a decisive contribution: in 1761, he discovered that adding heat to ice at its melting point or to boiling water did not change their temperature. His identification of latent and specific heat marked the birth of thermodynamics and introduced the distinction between heat and temperature.

In 1782, Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon de la Place constructed the first ice-calorimeter, launching quantitative calorimetry. With Joseph Black recently discovering how to measure carbon dioxide (non-vital air), Lavoisier and de la Place were able to determine that carbon combustion and respiration (via guinea pig) both produced this carbon dioxide as well as water, assuming the energy to form carbon dioxide and water to be consistent with the same reactants and products, a prelude to Hess's Law.

Notably, this is not actually what happens in respiration; carbon and water form the CO2 product in the Kreb's Cycle and the oxygen we breathe is decomposed by iron and copper in the Electron Transport Chain to accept hydrogens transported across the mitochondrial inner membrane, but we wouldn't know that for another 200 years. At least one recent publication has called this calorie-metabolism theory into question.

The conception of the ice-calorimeter is credited to Pierre Simon de la Place by Lavoisier in his 1789 book Elements of Chemistry, the book that some consider to be the world's first chemistry text book, and where Lavoisier also defines calorie himself in the first chapter:

"Wherefore, we have distinguished the cause of heat, or that exquisitely elastic fluid which produces it, by the term of caloric. Besides, that this expression fulfils our object in the system which we have adopted, it possesses this farther advantage, that it accords with every species of opinion, since, strictly speaking, we are not obliged to suppose this to be a real substance; it being sufficient, as will more clearly appear in the sequel of this work, that it be considered as the repulsive cause, whatever that may be, which separates the particles of matter from each other; so that we are still at liberty to investigate its effects in an abstract and mathematical manner." (Chapter 1, Paragraph 8, Elements of Chemistry).

Notably, the ice-calorimeter was first called the machine until the word calorie was coined in 1789. The next major advance came from Sir Benjamin Thompson in the 1790s. Observing heat generated during cannon boring under water, he concluded that heat must be a form of energy, not a material substance.

This idea was quantified by James Prescott Joule, who in the 1840s determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. Using falling weights to drive a paddle in an insulated liquid, Joule demonstrated that 4.184 joules of work produce the same heating effect as one calorie, establishing a numerical link between mechanical work and thermal energy.

Around the same time, in 1840, the chemist Germain Henri Hess formulated Hess's law, showing that the total enthalpy change of a chemical reaction is independent of the reaction path. This principle remains fundamental to modern thermochemistry and calorimetry.

Finally, in the 1870s, Pierre Eugène Berthelot developed the first modern bomb calorimeter and introduced the concepts of endothermic and exothermic reactions.

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