Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/93

Rh Let us suppose that operations 1 and 2 be performed on two gases of different chemical natures but under the same pressure—under atmospheric pressure, for example. These two gases will behave exactly alike under the same circumstances, that is, their expansive forces, originally equal, will remain always equal, whatever may be the variations of volume and of temperature, provided these variations are the same in both. This results obviously from the laws of Mariotte and MM. Gay-Lussac and Dalton—laws common to all elastic fluids, and in virtue of which the same relations exist for all these fluids between the volume, the expansive force, and the temperature.

Since two different gases at the same temperature and under the same pressure should behave alike under the same circumstances, if we subjected them both to the operations above described, they should give rise to equal quantities of motive power.

Now this implies, according to the fundamental proposition that we have established, the employment of two equal quantities of caloric; that is, it implies that the quantity of caloric transferred from the body A to the body B is the same, whichever gas is used.

The quantity of caloric transferred from the body A to the body B is evidently that which is