why zeroth law of thermodynamics got the name zero th law?
The laws of physics are numbered according to their fundamental nature, the more fundamental the law, the higher it is in the pecking order of the laws. E.g., Newton gave the three laws of motion in one go, but he numbered the First Law of motion as the "first law" because it was the most fundamental of all the three law. Without understanding the first law, you cannot go to the second and the third laws.
As far as Thermodynamics is concerned, the First Law had been in currency and had been accepted for long. But when some scientist postulated the (now called) Zeroth law, the scientific community came to the conclusion that this new law is more fundamental than the First Law because it provides the basis for defining an entity called Temperature. So they decided to call it the Zeroth Law, i.e. more fundamental than the First Law.
This explanation was given in the Resnick-Halliday- Walker Physics
The laws of physics are numbered according to their fundamental nature, the more fundamental the law, the higher it is in the pecking order of the laws. E.g., Newton gave the three laws of motion in one go, but he numbered the First Law of motion as the "first law" because it was the most fundamental of all the three law. Without understanding the first law, you cannot go to the second and the third laws.
As far as Thermodynamics is concerned, the First Law had been in currency and had been accepted for long. But when some scientist postulated the (now called) Zeroth law, the scientific community came to the conclusion that this new law is more fundamental than the First Law because it provides the basis for defining an entity called Temperature. So they decided to call it the Zeroth Law, i.e. more fundamental than the First Law.
This explanation was given in the Resnick-Halliday- Walker Physics
Comments
Post a Comment