Heat and efficiency calculations for negatively sloping, straight-line paths in PV diagrams seem to be consistently misleading or incorrect in many introductory physics texts. The source of the error is identified and thoroughly explored with several examples.
Clockwise cycles on PV diagrams always represent heat engines. It is therefore tempting to assume that counterclockwise cycles always represent refrigerators. This common assumption is incorrect: most counterclockwise cycles cannot be refrigerators. This surprising result is explored here for quasi-static ideal gas cycles, and the necessary conditions for refrigeration cycles are clarified. Three logically self-consistent criteria can be used to determine if a counterclockwise cycle is a refrigerator. The most fundamental test compares the counterclockwise cycle with a correctly determined corresponding Carnot cycle. Other criteria we employ include a widely accepted description of the functional behavior of refrigerators, and a corollary to the second law that limits a refrigerator's coefficient of performance.
A simple introductory setup is described that takes a gas through a complete thermodynamic cycle; air is the working substance. The ratio of specific heats for air is easily measured.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.