Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An irreversible process increases the total entropy of the system and its surroundings. The second law of thermodynamics can be used to determine whether a hypothetical process is reversible or not. Intuitively, a process is reversible if there is no dissipation. For example, Joule expansion is irreversible because initially the system is not ...
Furthermore, spontaneity makes no implication as to the speed at which the spontaneous process may occur - just because a process is spontaneous does not mean it will happen quickly (or at all). As an example, the conversion of a diamond into graphite is a spontaneous process at room temperature and pressure. Despite being spontaneous, this ...
It predicts whether processes are forbidden despite obeying the requirement of conservation of energy as expressed in the first law of thermodynamics and provides necessary criteria for spontaneous processes. For example, the first law allows the process of a cup falling off a table and breaking on the floor, as well as allowing the reverse ...
While reversible processes are a useful and convenient theoretical limiting case, all natural processes are irreversible. A prime example of this irreversibility is the transfer of heat by conduction or radiation.
"Spontaneous generation" means both the supposed processes by which different types of life might repeatedly emerge from specific sources other than seeds, eggs, or parents, and the theoretical principles presented in support of any such phenomena.
For example, a glass of warm water with an ice cube in it will have a lower entropy than that same system some time later when the ice has melted leaving a glass of cool water. Such processes are irreversible: A glass of cool water will not spontaneously turn into a glass of warm water with an ice cube in it. Some processes in nature are almost ...
Chemical diffusion increases the entropy of a system, i.e. diffusion is a spontaneous and irreversible process. Particles can spread out by diffusion, but will not spontaneously re-order themselves (absent changes to the system, assuming no creation of new chemical bonds, and absent external forces acting on the particle).
An irreversible process degrades the performance of a thermodynamic system, designed to do work or produce cooling, and results in entropy production. The entropy generation during a reversible process is zero. Thus entropy production is a measure of the irreversibility and may be used to compare engineering processes and machines.