text: Maxwell’s thermodynamic surface is an 1874 sculpture made by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879).  This model provides a three-dimensional space of the various states of a fictitious substance with water-like properties. This plot has coordinates volume (x), entropy (y), and energy (z).  It was based on the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs’ graphical thermodynamics papers of 1873. The model, in Maxwell's words, allowed "the principal features of known  substances [to] be represented on a convenient scale."