By Nazar Haro & Imi Negev
Thermodynamics is the branch of physics concerned with heat and temperature and their relation to energy and work. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of thermodynamics, irrespective of the composition or specific properties of the material or system in question. The laws of thermodynamics are explained in terms of macroscopic constituents by statistical mechanics. Thermodynamics applies to a wide variety of topics in science and engineering, especially physical chemistry, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering.
Historically, thermodynamics developed out of a desire to increase the efficiency of early steam engines, particularly through the work of French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that engine efficiency was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars. Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate a concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854 which stated, "Thermo-dynamics is the subject of the relation of heat to forces acting between contiguous parts of bodies, and the relation of heat to electrical agency."
The initial application of thermodynamics to mechanical heat engines was extended early on to the study of chemical compounds and chemical reactions. Chemical thermodynamics studies the nature of the role of entropy in the process of chemical reactions and has provided the bulk of expansion and knowledge of the field. Other formulations of thermodynamics emerged in the following decades. Statistical thermodynamics, or statistical mechanics, concerned itself with statistical predictions of the collective motion of particles from their microscopic behavior. In 1909, Constantin Carathéodory presented a purely mathematical approach to the field in his axiomatic formulation of thermodynamics, a description often referred to as geometrical thermodynamics.
The Liber Abaci Institute has a complementary perspective of the thermodynamics based principally on the dynamo theory, on the present understanding of gravity with the Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and on the quantum gravity field. The Institute will show through natural evidence a deeper reality of the heat, plasma or electricity.THERMODYNAMICS
The four laws of thermodynamics define fundamental physical quantities (temperature, energy, and entropy) that characterize thermodynamic systems at thermal equilibrium. The laws describe how these quantities behave under various circumstances, and forbid certain phenomena (such as perpetual motion).
The four laws of thermodynamics are:
0- Zeroth law of thermodynamics: If two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. This law helps define the concept of temperature.There have been suggestions of additional laws, but none of them achieves the generality of the four accepted laws, and they are not mentioned in standard textbooks.
The laws of thermodynamics are important fundamental laws in physics and they are applicable in other natural sciences.
THERMODYNAMICS
The thermodynamic free energy is the amount of work that a thermodynamic system can perform. The concept is useful in the thermodynamics of chemical or thermal processes in engineering and science. The free energy is the internal energy of a system minus the amount of energy that cannot be used to perform work. This unusable energy is given by the entropy of a system multiplied by the temperature of the system.
Like the internal energy, the free energy is a thermodynamic state function. Energy is a generalization of free energy, since energy is the ability to do work which is free energy.
Free energy is that portion of any first-law energy that is available to perform thermodynamic work; i.e., work mediated by thermal energy. Free energy is subject to irreversible loss in the course of such work. Since first-law energy is always conserved, it is evident that free energy is an expendable, second-law kind of energy that can perform work within finite amounts of time. Several free energy functions may be formulated based on system criteria. Free energy functions are Legendre transformations of the internal energy. For processes involving a system at constant pressure p and temperature T, the Gibbs free energy is the most useful because, in addition to subsuming any entropy change due merely to heat, it does the same for the p dV work needed to "make space for additional molecules" produced by various processes. (Hence its utility to solution-phase chemists, including biochemists.) The Helmholtz free energy has a special theoretical importance since it is proportional to the logarithm of the partition function for the canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics. (Hence its utility to physicists; and to gas-phase chemists and engineers, who do not want to ignore p dV work.)THERMODYNAMICS
By Nazar Haro & Imi Negev