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The history of thermodynamics is a fundamental strand in the history of physics, the history of chemistry, and the history of science in general. Due to the relevance of thermodynamics in much of science and technology, its history is finely woven with the developments of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, magnetism, and chemical kinetics, to more distant applied fields such as ...
1916 – Einstein considers the thermodynamics of atomic spectral lines and predicts stimulated emission; 1919 – James Jeans discovers that the dynamical constants of motion determine the distribution function for a system of particles; 1920 – Meghnad Saha states his ionization equation [21]
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 ...
A description of any thermodynamic system employs the four laws of thermodynamics that form an axiomatic basis. The first law specifies that energy can be transferred between physical systems as heat, as work, and with transfer of matter. [5]
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.
The second law of thermodynamics establishes the concept of entropy as a physical property of a thermodynamic system. 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 .
Gilliland stated that in maximum power theory the second law efficiency of thermodynamics required an additional physical concept: "the concept of second law efficiency under maximum power" (Gilliland 1978, p. 101): Neither the first or second law of thermodynamics include a measure of the rate at which energy transformations or processes occur.
(1) A Thermodynamic process is a process in which the thermodynamic state of a system is changed. A change in a system is defined by a passage from an initial to a final state of thermodynamic equilibrium. In classical thermodynamics, the actual course of the process is not the primary concern, and often is ignored.