Sounds a lot like phlogiston, especially since it apparently must be continuously created to matched observable behavior.
Beware the Physical Chem, my son!
The laws that arn’t, the constants that vary.
Beware the phlogiston, my little one
And of the molality be wary.
He took his entropy in hand
Long time the adiabatic foe he sought
So rested he by the delta T
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in Newtonian Thought he stood
The Physical Chem with Beer’s Law Plot,
Came Bohring through the orbital wood
And took quantum leaps when hot!
PV! RT! And with fugacity,
The entropy discharged his wrath.
It reached a degenerate state, and being late,
He returned by the mean free path
The second corresponding verse (so this corresponds to "He took his entropy in hand"), so others can see the resemblance (I chose the second since the first is a bit harder to see):
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.