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Equilibrium thermodynamic processes may involve fluxes but these must have ceased by the time a thermodynamic process or operation is complete bringing a system to its eventual thermodynamic state. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics allows its state variables to include non-zero fluxes, which describe transfers of mass or energy or entropy between ...
A diagram of a generic thermodynamic system. An important concept in thermodynamics is the thermodynamic system, which is a precisely defined region of the universe under study. Everything in the universe except the system is called the surroundings.
Altitude (or elevation) is usually not a thermodynamic property. Altitude can help specify the location of a system, but that does not describe the state of the system. An exception would be if the effect of gravity need to be considered in order to describe a state, in which case altitude could indeed be a thermodynamic property.
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The equilibrium state of a thermodynamic system is described by specifying its "state". The state of a thermodynamic system is specified by a number of extensive quantities, the most familiar of which are volume, internal energy, and the amount of each constituent particle (particle numbers). Extensive parameters are properties of the entire ...
The first law of thermodynamics is essentially a definition of heat, i.e. heat is the change in the internal energy of a system that is not caused by a change of the external parameters of the system. However, the second law of thermodynamics is not a defining relation for the entropy.
A thermodynamic system is a macroscopic object, the microscopic details of which are not explicitly considered in its thermodynamic description. The number of state variables required to specify the thermodynamic state depends on the system, and is not always known in advance of experiment; it is usually found from experimental evidence.
If at every point in the cycle the system is in thermodynamic equilibrium, the cycle is reversible. Whether carried out reversible or irreversibly, the net entropy change of the system is zero, as entropy is a state function. During a closed cycle, the system returns to its original thermodynamic state of temperature and pressure.