Hottest Motivational Quotes

This logic told Carnot that the real steam engines of his day had to be woefully wasteful. The hottest temperature the steam reached as it expanded and pushed a piston was, Carnot reckoned, a little over 160°C. The coldest it fell to as it condensed was around 40°C. That meant steam engines were extracting motive power from a temperature drop of around 120°C. But the temperature in the engine’s furnace in which the coal was burning was over 1,000°C, and that meant a much-larger temperature drop—of 900°C or more—was being wasted.