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Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers , and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain .
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal empirical observation concerning heat and energy interconversions.A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter (or 'downhill' in terms of the temperature gradient).
Energy flux is the rate of transfer of energy through a surface. The quantity is defined in two different ways, depending on the context: Total rate of energy transfer (not per unit area); [1] SI units: W = J⋅s −1. Specific rate of energy transfer (total normalized per unit area); [2] SI units: W⋅m −2 = J⋅m −2 ⋅s −1:
When a system transforms reversibly from an initial state to a final state under these conditions, the decrease in Gibbs free energy equals the work done by the system to its surroundings, minus the work of the pressure forces. [1] The Gibbs energy is the thermodynamic potential that is minimized when a system reaches chemical equilibrium at ...
"Energy current" is a somewhat informal term that is used, on occasion, to describe the process of energy transfer in situations where the transfer can usefully be viewed in terms of a flow. It is particularly used when the transfer of energy is more significant to the discussion than the process by which the energy is transferred.
Energy flow may refer to: Energy transfer, the transfer of physical energy from one body or place to another; Energy flow (ecology), the flow of energy through a biological food chain; Energy (esotericism) flow, the movement of spiritual energy; Fluid dynamics, energy of a flowing fluid related to pressure "Energy Flow", a 1999 song by Ryuichi ...
In thermodynamics, dissipation is the result of an irreversible process that affects a thermodynamic system.In a dissipative process, energy (internal, bulk flow kinetic, or system potential) transforms from an initial form to a final form, where the capacity of the final form to do thermodynamic work is less than that of the initial form.
This transfer of energy between different scales requires that the dynamics of the system is nonlinear. Strictly speaking, a cascade requires the energy transfer to be local in scale (only between fluctuations of nearly the same size), evoking a cascading waterfall from pool to pool without long-range transfers across the scale domain.