Model of a Thermodynamic Surface for an Abnormal Three-State by Richard P. Baker, Baker #259

In the 1870s physicists in Scotland and the United States began to make three-dimensional models of the thermal properties of matter. This plaster model of a thermodynamic surface has a wooden frame painted black. A paper sticker reads: No. 259 (/) Abnormal 3-state (/) Diagrammatic.

This is one of a series of nine models University of Iowa mathematician Richard P. Baker made that relate to thermodynamic surfaces. It was designed under the supervision of his German-born colleague Karl Eugen Guthe (1866–1915), who taught in the physics department there from 1905 until 1909. The model remained in Baker’s catalog as late as 1931. This particular example of the model was on loan for exhibition at MIT from 1939 until the mid-1950s. It, along with the other models in accession 211257, came to the Smithsonian from MIT in 1956.

For general references, see MA.304723.045.

R. P. Baker delivered a paper to the April 1910 meeting of the Chicago section of the American Mathematical Society that was entitled "On a class of equations representing normal and abnormal three-state bodies." A summary - which gives equations - is given in the reference cited and used to give a rough date of 1910 for the model.

Reference:

Slaught, H.E., "April Meeting of the Chicago Section, " Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 16, 1910, p. 458, 462.

Currently not on view