Abstract
Thermodynamics began, as the name suggests, from the study of heat, but it has developed into the study of the interconversion of all forms of energy. The laws of thermodynamics are not mathematically derivable, but were constructed on the basis of experiment and experience. Although the subject covers every possible change, physical or chemical, which a substance can undergo, the bare essentials of thermodynamics may be stated very simply, that the internal energy of a isolated system is constant and the entropy of a system at equilibrium cannot spontaneously decrease. These ideas however took a long time to formulate, and their application to a system of interest is not always trivial. The concept of entropy is particularly difficult for many, partly because the word is widely used in many fields, often with no clear definition. It is not however synonymous with disorder or chaos, it is a precisely defined quantity. Part of the problem with understanding entropy is that its effects are so ubiquitous.
The highest goal that the Sciences have to seek is ... tracing all phenomena back to mechanics.
Kirchhoff
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- 1.
This is indeed the definition of “perfectly elastic”.
- 2.
The capital Greek letter \(\Delta \) is used to signify large changes, and d is used to signify infinitesimal ones. Thus for example increasing the volume V of a system by an amount dV does not appreciably change the pressure, which can be taken as fixed throughout this tiny increase in volume. For a larger volume increase, \(\Delta V\), then the internal pressure will be expected to fall. In general, \(\Delta x = \int _{x_0}^{x_1} dx\). Prefixing a quantity with \(\Delta \) does not imply that it is given by an exact function.
References
C. Lewis, An Allegory of Love, 3rd edn. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1930)
I. Prigogine, Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes (John Wiley, New Jersy, 1967)
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Tame, J.R.H. (2019). General Thermodynamics. In: Approaches to Entropy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2315-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2315-7_1
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