Historical Evolution of Common Energy Units in Chemistry
PAN Qing1,2, HE Jia-Ni1,2, CAI Kai-Cong1,2**
1. College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China; 2. Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
Abstract In the 19th century, the CGS unit was established by British physicist Maxwell et.al, and the unit of energy, erg, was proposed by Clausius; Additionally, the earliest calorie unit was proposed by French chemist Clément, and widely used in early thermodynamic research. The International System of Units was set in 1960, and joule was treated as common used international unit of energy, thus highly applied in scientific research, engineering, and teaching fields. With the development of quantum mechanics in the 20th century, electron volt and hartree units that suitable for microscopic scale description emerged. The evolution of the energy units shows the development of science from macro to micro scale, reflecting the nature of scientific theories are constantly progress in practice.
PAN Qing, HE Jia-Ni, CAI Kai-Cong. Historical Evolution of Common Energy Units in Chemistry[J]. Chinese Journal of Chemical Education, 2024, 45(20): 118-122.
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