Why Are Q and Q Used To Symbolize Heat?: Chemistry For Everyone

Chemistry for Everyone
edited by
William B. Jensen
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0172
Why Are q and Q Used To Symbolize Heat?

William B. Jensen
Department of Chemistry, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0172
[email protected]
Question Q and instead consistently employed both a lowercase letter q

for heat and a lowercase letter w for work (5), while Samuel
Why are q and Q used to symbolized heat, and when should Glasstone, in his 1947 textbook Thermodynamics for Chemists,
one use the lowercase versus the uppercase letter? adopted the convention of employing the lowercase letters q and
Douglas Horsey w for arbitrary, path-dependent, infinitesimal quantities of heat
Nyack High School and work, but the uppercase letters, Q and W, for their algebraic
360 Christian Herald Road sums (6). Apparently this eclecticism is still very much with us as
Nyack, NY 10960 the most recent IUPAC guide to quantities, units, and symbols
in physical chemistry lists both q and Q as equally valid symbols
Answer for heat, though it also lists Q as the symbol for electrical charge
and for the reaction quotient (7).
An uppercase letter Q was first used to symbolize “the
absolute quantity of heat” by the French engineer, Benoit-Paul-E
mile Clapeyron (1799-1864), in his famous memoir of 1834 in Literature Cited
which he first quantified what it is now known as the Carnot 1. Clapeyron, E. Memoire sur la puissance motrice de la chaleur. J. l'ecole
cycle (1). Carnot himself did not use a symbol for the quantity of polytechnique 1834, 14, 153–190. An English translation appears in
heat in his original memoir of 1824, which was largely verbal Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and Other Papers on the Second
rather than mathematical in character, and Clapeyron most Law of Thermodynamics, Mendoza, E., Ed.; Dover: New York, 1960;
likely selected the letter Q to emphasize that he was dealing with pp 71-105.
the quantity of heat rather than with its intensity or temperature, 2. The most important of these papers are collected together in English
for which he used an uppercase letter T. Building on the work of translation in Clausius, R. The Mechanical Theory of Heat; Van
Clapeyron in the 1850s and 1860s, Clausius not only continued Voorst: London, 1867.
to use Q to symbolize heat in his various memoirs on the theory 3. Horstmann, A. Theorie der Dissociation. Ann. Chem. Pharm. 1873,
of heat, he also employed an uppercase letter W to represent 170, 192–210. An English translation appears as Horstmann, A. The
mechanical work (2). Theory of Dissociation. Bull. Hist. Chem. 2009, 34 (2), 76-82.
However, as the theory of thermodynamics continued to 4. Haber, F. Thermodynamik technischer Gasreaktionen; Oldenbourg:
evolve, several authors felt the necessity of distinguishing be- Munchen, 1905; pp 10, 14. An English translation appears as Haber,
tween various sources of heat, while displaying little agreement F. Thermodynamics of Technical Gas-Reactions, Longmans, Green
with regard to the resulting symbolism. Thus, in his famous and Co: London, 1908.
memoir of 1873 on the application of the entropy concept to the 5. Lewis, G. N.; Randall, M. Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of
phenomenon of chemical equilibrium, the German chemist Chemical Substances; McGraw-Hill: New York, 1923; pp 621-623.
August Horstmann used an uppercase letter Q to “denote the 6. Glasstone, S. Thermodynamics for Chemists; Van Nostrand: New
quantity of heat required to decompose one mole of a com- York, 1947; pp 40-41.
pound” but a lowercase letter q to represent “the actual heat of 7. IUPAC. Quantities, Units, and Symbols in Physical Chemistry,
decomposition” or heat of reaction (3), whereas Fritz Haber, in 3rd ed.; RSC Publishing: London, 2007; pp 16, 56, 58.
his 1901 monograph on the thermodynamics of technical gas
reactions, followed the lead of Helmholtz in using an uppercase Do you have a question about the historical origins of a
letter Q to denote standard heats of reaction and transition, but a symbol, name, concept, or experimental procedure used in your
lowercase letter q to represent the bound or “latent” heat due to teaching? Address them to William B. Jensen, Oesper Collections
isothermal entropy generation (i.e., TΔS) (4). in the History of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University
In contrast, Lewis and Randall, in their famous 1923 of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0172; jensenwb@
monograph on thermodynamics, made no use of the uppercase ucmail.uc.edu.
_ _ _
1142 Journal of Chemical Education Vol. 87 No. 11 November 2010 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
10.1021/ed100769d Published on Web 09/09/2010

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Question Q and instead consistently employed both a lowercase letter q

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