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When it is completely settled, so that macroscopic change is no longer detectable, it is in its own thermal equilibrium. It is not implied that it is necessarily in other kinds of internal equilibrium. For example, it is possible that a body might reach internal thermal equilibrium but not be in internal chemical equilibrium; glass is an ...
In thermodynamics, the thermodynamic free energy is one of the state functions of a thermodynamic system (the others being internal energy, enthalpy, entropy, etc.).The change in the free energy is the maximum amount of work that the system can perform in a process at constant temperature, and its sign indicates whether the process is thermodynamically favorable or forbidden.
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 zeroth law of thermodynamics defines thermal equilibrium and forms a basis for the definition of temperature: If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.
This statement implies that thermal equilibrium is an equivalence relation on the set of thermodynamic systems under consideration. Systems are said to be in equilibrium if the small, random exchanges between them (e.g. Brownian motion) do not lead to a net change in energy. This law is tacitly assumed in every measurement of temperature.
Chemical potentials are important in many aspects of multi-phase equilibrium chemistry, including melting, boiling, evaporation, solubility, osmosis, partition coefficient, liquid-liquid extraction and chromatography. In each case the chemical potential of a given species at equilibrium is the same in all phases of the system. [6]
Examples of thermalisation include: the achievement of equilibrium in a plasma. [1] the process undergone by high-energy neutrons as they lose energy by collision with a moderator. [2] the process of heat or phonon emission by charge carriers in a solar cell, after a photon that exceeds the semiconductor band gap energy is absorbed. [3]
Thermodynamic equilibrium is a notion of thermodynamics with axiomatic status referring to an internal state of a single thermodynamic system, or a relation between several thermodynamic systems connected by more or less permeable or impermeable walls.