kind we have considered, and thus to continually restore the heat from B to A, which has descended from A to B for working itself; so that we should have a complex engine, giving a residual amount of mechanical effect without any thermal agency, or alteration of materials, which is an impossibility in nature. The same reasoning is applicable to the air-engine; and we conclude, generally, that any two engines, constructed on the principles laid down above, whether steam-engines with different liquids, an air-engine and a steam-engine, or two air-engines with different gases, must derive the same amount of mechanical effect from the same thermal agency.
30. Hence, by comparing the amounts of mechanical effect obtained by the steam-engine and the air-engine from the letting down of the H units of heat from A at the temperature (t + τ) to B at t, according to the expressions (2) and (3), we have
| (5) |
If we denote the coefficient of Hτ in these equal expressions by μ, which may be called "Carnot's coefficient," we have
| (6) |
