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The space outside the thermodynamic system is known as the surroundings, a reservoir, or the environment. The properties of the walls determine what transfers can occur. A wall that allows transfer of a quantity is said to be permeable to it, and a thermodynamic system is classified by the permeabilities of its several walls.
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.
Out of a total of 28,400 terawatt-hours (96.8 × 10 ^ 15 BTU) of energy used in the US in 1999, 10.5% was used in food production, [3] with the percentage accounting for food from both producer and primary consumer trophic levels. In comparing the cultivation of animals versus plants, there is a clear difference in magnitude of energy efficiency.
Biological thermodynamics (Thermodynamics of biological systems) is a science that explains the nature and general laws of thermodynamic processes occurring in living organisms as nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems that convert the energy of the Sun and food into other types of energy. The nonequilibrium thermodynamic state of living ...
The precise physiological mechanism enabling plant thermotropism is not yet understood. [4] It has been noted that one of the earliest physiological responses by plants to cooling is an influx of calcium ions from the cell walls into the cytosol, which increases calcium ion concentration in the intracellular space.
Systems do not contain work, but can perform work, and likewise, in formal thermodynamics, systems do not contain heat, but can transfer heat. Informally, however, a difference in the energy of a system that occurs solely because of a difference in its temperature is commonly called heat , and the energy that flows across a boundary as a result ...
Thermodynamic cycles may be used to model real devices and systems, typically by making a series of assumptions to reduce the problem to a more manageable form. [2] For example, as shown in the figure, devices such a gas turbine or jet engine can be modeled as a Brayton cycle. The actual device is made up of a series of stages, each of which is ...
Classical thermodynamics considers three main kinds of thermodynamic processes: (1) changes in a system, (2) cycles in a system, and (3) flow processes. (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 ...