Abstract

History shows that up to 1870’s, the thermodynamic cycles, particularly Carnot’s cycle, were the most important heuristic instruments as much to formulate the general laws of physics as well to deduce the experimental laws. From this moment on, this instrument falls into disuse with surprising rapidity. At the end of this decade emerges a new thermodynamic formulation, proposed by Gibbs, the thermodynamics of the potentials. This sudden transition from thermodynamic of cycles to potentials was triggered by the difficult to approach the emergence of the phase transition phenomena with the diagrammatic method. The main objective of the article is, then, to analyze the consequences of the substitution, by Gibbs, of the diagrammatic by the geometric method, particularly, its heuristic potential related to the proposal of the formulation of the thermodynamic of potentials.