Dulong–Petit law

The Dulong–Petit law, a thermodynamic law proposed by French physicists Pierre Louis Dulong and Alexis Thérèse Petit in 1839, states that the classical expression for the molar heat capacity of certain chemical elements is constant for temperatures far from the absolute zero.

In modern terms, Dulong and Petit found that the heat capacity of a mole of many solid elements is about 3R, where R is the universal gas constant. The modern theory of the heat capacity of solids states that it is due to lattice vibrations in the solid.

The first theoretical proof of the law was given by Ludwig Boltzmann using statistical mechanics in 1877.

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