Systems and processes

Abstract

This chapter introduces, in rather general terms, the classical thermodynamic description of the behaviour of matter. The description is a macroscopic one — that is, in terms of large-scale or gross properties — and, although this has the advantage of not needing any assumptions about the structure of matter [1], it will be shown that the description is then restricted to time-independent situations. The chapter starts by defining a number of terms used in the thermodynamic description.