Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The first part of the book starts by presenting the problem thermodynamics is trying to solve, and provides the postulates on which thermodynamics is founded. It then develops upon this foundation to discuss reversible processes, heat engines, thermodynamics potentials, Maxwell's relations, stability of thermodynamics systems, and first-order phase transitions.
Kirchhoff's original contribution to the physics of thermal radiation was his postulate of a perfect black body radiating and absorbing thermal radiation in an enclosure opaque to thermal radiation and with walls that absorb at all wavelengths. Kirchhoff's perfect black body absorbs all the radiation that falls upon it.
In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic state of a system is its condition at a specific time; that is, fully identified by values of a suitable set of parameters known as state variables, state parameters or thermodynamic variables.
The laws of thermodynamics are the result of progress made in this field over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first established thermodynamic principle, which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics, was formulated by Sadi Carnot in 1824 in his book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire.
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.
In physics and chemistry, an equation of state is a thermodynamic equation relating state variables, which describe the state of matter under a given set of physical conditions, such as pressure, volume, temperature, or internal energy. [1] [2] Most modern equations of state are formulated in the Helmholtz free energy.
The first law of thermodynamics is a formulation of the law of conservation of energy in the context of thermodynamic processes.The law distinguishes two principal forms of energy transfer, heat and thermodynamic work, that modify a thermodynamic system containing a constant amount of matter.
In thermodynamics, the thermodynamic free energy is one of the state functions of a thermodynamic system.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.