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The system is delimited by walls or boundaries, either actual or notional, across which conserved (such as matter and energy) or unconserved (such as entropy) quantities can pass into and out of the system. The space outside the thermodynamic system is known as the surroundings, a reservoir, or the environment. The properties of the walls ...
In thermodynamics, interactions between large ensembles of objects are studied and categorized. Central to this are the concepts of the thermodynamic system and its surroundings. A system is composed of particles, whose average motions define its properties, and those properties are in turn related to one another through equations of state.
Thermodynamic work is one of the principal kinds of process by which a thermodynamic system can interact with and transfer energy to its surroundings. This results in externally measurable macroscopic forces on the system's surroundings, which can cause mechanical work, to lift a weight, for example, [1] or cause changes in electromagnetic, [2] [3] [4] or gravitational [5] variables.
The choice is usually made on the basis of the walls and surroundings that are relevant for the thermodynamic processes that are to be considered for the system. For example, if it is intended to consider heat transfer for the system, then a wall of the system should be permeable to heat, and that wall should connect the system to a body, in ...
Often the surroundings of a thermodynamic system may also be regarded as another thermodynamic system. In this view, one may consider the system and its surroundings as two systems in mutual contact, with long-range forces also linking them. The enclosure of the system is the surface of contiguity or boundary between the two systems.
In thermodynamics, interactions between large ensembles of objects are studied and categorized. Central to this are the concepts of system and surroundings. A system is composed of particles, whose average motions define its properties, which in turn are related to one another through equations of state.
Thermodynamics defines the statistical behaviour of large numbers of entities, whose exact behavior is given by more specific laws. While the fundamental theoretical laws of physics are all time-reversible, [8] experimentally the probability of real reversibility is low and the former state of system and surroundings is recovered only to certain extent (see: uncertainty principle).
A thermodynamic potential (or more accurately, a thermodynamic potential energy) [1] [2] is a scalar quantity used to represent the thermodynamic state of a system.Just as in mechanics, where potential energy is defined as capacity to do work, similarly different potentials have different meanings.