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The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic processes. In general, the conservation law states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.
The zeroth law is of importance in thermometry, because it implies the existence of temperature scales. In practice, C is a thermometer, and the zeroth law says that systems that are in thermodynamic equilibrium with each other have the same temperature. The law was actually the last of the laws to be formulated. First law of thermodynamics
Thermal physics, generally speaking, is the study of the statistical nature of physical systems from an energetic perspective. Starting with the basics of heat and temperature, thermal physics analyzes the first law of thermodynamics and second law of thermodynamics from the statistical perspective, in terms of the number of microstates corresponding to a given macrostate.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, a system assumes a configuration of maximum entropy at thermodynamic equilibrium. We seek a probability distribution of states ρ i {\displaystyle \rho _{i}} that maximizes the discrete Gibbs entropy S = − k B ∑ i ρ i ln ρ i {\displaystyle S=-k_{\text{B}}\sum _{i}\rho _{i}\ln \rho _{i ...
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. For example, the ...
For quasi-static and reversible processes, the first law of thermodynamics is: d U = δ Q − δ W {\displaystyle dU=\delta Q-\delta W} where δQ is the heat supplied to the system and δW is the work done by the system.
The grand canonical ensemble is the ensemble that describes the possible states of an isolated system that is in thermal and chemical equilibrium with a reservoir (the derivation proceeds along lines analogous to the heat bath derivation of the normal canonical ensemble, and can be found in Reif [3]).
For heat flow, the heat equation follows from the physical laws of conduction of heat and conservation of energy (Cannon 1984). By Fourier's law for an isotropic medium, the rate of flow of heat energy per unit area through a surface is proportional to the negative temperature gradient across it: =