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The second law of thermodynamics can be used to determine whether a hypothetical process is reversible or not. Intuitively, a process is reversible if there is no dissipation. For example, Joule expansion is irreversible because initially the system is not uniform. Initially, there is part of the system with gas in it, and part of the system ...
Loschmidt's paradox is equivalent to the question of how it is possible that there could be a thermodynamic arrow of time given time-symmetric fundamental laws, since time-symmetry implies that for any process compatible with these fundamental laws, a reversed version that looked exactly like a film of the first process played backwards would ...
As this quantity H was meant to represent the entropy of thermodynamics, the H-theorem was an early demonstration of the power of statistical mechanics as it claimed to derive the second law of thermodynamics—a statement about fundamentally irreversible processes—from reversible microscopic mechanics.
A prime example of this irreversibility is the transfer of heat by conduction or radiation. It was known long before the discovery of the notion of entropy that when two bodies, initially of different temperatures, come into direct thermal connection, then heat immediately and spontaneously flows from the hotter body to the colder one.
That a state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium of a body have a well defined internal energy, that is postulated by the first law of thermodynamics. The universality of the law of conservation of energy. The recognition of work as a form of energy transfer. The universal irreversibility of natural processes. The existence of adiabatic ...
In thermodynamics and thermal physics, the Gouy-Stodola theorem is an important theorem for the quantification of irreversibilities in an open system, and aids in the exergy analysis of thermodynamic processes.
Various principles have been proposed by diverse authors for over a century. According to Glansdorff and Prigogine (1971, page 15), [9] in general, these principles apply only to systems that can be described by thermodynamical variables, in which dissipative processes dominate by excluding large deviations from statistical equilibrium.
The first and second law of thermodynamics are the most fundamental equations of thermodynamics. They may be combined into what is known as fundamental thermodynamic relation which describes all of the changes of thermodynamic state functions of a system of uniform temperature and pressure.