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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).
The distinction between natural law in the political-legal sense and law of nature or physical law in the scientific sense is a modern one, both concepts being equally derived from physis, the Greek word (translated into Latin as natura) for nature. [24]
According to the second law, in a reversible heat transfer, an element of heat transferred, , is the product of the temperature (), both of the system and of the sources or destination of the heat, with the increment of the system's conjugate variable, its entropy (): [1]
Natura non facit saltus [1] [2] (Latin for "nature does not make jumps") has been an important principle of natural philosophy.It appears as an axiom in the works of Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays, IV, 16: [2] "la nature ne fait jamais des sauts", "nature never makes jumps"), one of the inventors of the infinitesimal calculus (see Law of Continuity).
The word physics comes from the Latin physica ('study of nature'), which itself is a borrowing of the Greek φυσική (phusikḗ 'natural science'), a term derived from φύσις (phúsis 'origin, nature, property').
Second law: The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the net force acting upon it. Third law: Whenever one body exerts a force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body. Nielsen's law: A high-end user's internet connection speed grows by 50% per year.
Law of nature or laws of nature may refer to: Science. Scientific law, statements based on experimental observations that describe some aspect of the world;
Newton's proof of Kepler's second law, as described in the book. If a continuous centripetal force (red arrow) is considered on the planet during its orbit, the area of the triangles defined by the path of the planet will be the same. This is true for any fixed time interval. When the interval tends to zero, the force can be considered ...