Imagine that you lived 180 years ago when the relationships between heat and work were not well understood. You have formulated a hypothesis that work can be converted to heat with the same amount of work always generating the same amount of heat. To test this idea, you have designed an experiment using a device in which a falling weight is connected through pulleys to a shaft with an attached paddle wheel that is immersed in water. This is actually a classic experiment performed by James Joule in the 1840s (picture of experimental setup is on the last page).