The efficiency of an heat engine is traditionally defined as the ratio of its average output work over its average input heat. Its highest possible value was discovered by Carnot in 1824 and is a ...

In 1824, French engineer Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot – known as the father of thermodynamics – proposed what is known as the Carnot engine, the most efficient engine which is theoretically possible.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have cracked an age-old thermodynamic puzzle by devising a novel micro heat ...

Tabletop experiments by Indian physicists have broken a barrier proposed 200 years ago by a legendary French engineer, Sadi Carnot, raising hopes of new high-efficiency heat engines hitherto ...

Since its inception about two centuries ago thermodynamics has sparkled continuous interest and fundamental questions. According to the second law no heat engine can have an efficiency larger than ...

One famous limit of thermodynamics is that heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, must be less efficient than a Carnot heat engine (a heat engine cycle designed by French ...

“We’ve developed the world’s smallest steam engine, or to be more precise the smallest Stirling engine, and found that the machine really does perform work,” said Clemens Bechinger, a physicist at the ...