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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 ...
Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation.
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.
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.
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.
The Helmholtz free energy is a useful quantity when studying thermodynamic transformations in which the temperature is held constant. Although the reduction in the number of variables is a useful simplification, the main advantage comes from the fact that the Helmholtz free energy is minimized at equilibrium with respect to any unconstrained ...
The first law of thermodynamics is essentially a definition of heat, i.e. heat is the change in the internal energy of a system that is not caused by a change of the external parameters of the system. However, the second law of thermodynamics is not a defining relation for the entropy.
The history of thermodynamics is fundamentally interwoven with the history of physics and the history of chemistry, and ultimately dates back to theories of heat in antiquity. The laws of thermodynamics are the result of progress made in this field over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.