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An important concept in thermodynamics is the thermodynamic system, which is a precisely defined region of the universe under study. Everything in the universe except the system is called the surroundings .
These concepts of temperature and of thermal equilibrium are fundamental to thermodynamics and were clearly stated in the nineteenth century. The name 'zeroth law' was invented by Ralph H. Fowler in the 1930s, long after the first, second, and third laws were widely recognized.
A concept related to the second law which is important in thermodynamics is that of reversibility. A process within a given isolated system is said to be reversible if throughout the process the entropy never increases (i.e. the entropy remains unchanged). Third law of thermodynamics = when =
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.
For quasi-static and reversible processes, the first law of thermodynamics is: d U = δ Q − δ W {\displaystyle dU=\delta Q-\delta W} where δQ is the heat supplied to the system and δW is the work done by the system.
The second law of thermodynamics establishes the concept of entropy as a physical property of a thermodynamic system. It predicts whether processes are forbidden despite obeying the requirement of conservation of energy as expressed in the first law of thermodynamics and provides necessary criteria for spontaneous processes. For example, the ...
Equilibrium thermodynamics, as a subject in physics, considers macroscopic bodies of matter and energy in states of internal thermodynamic equilibrium. It uses the concept of thermodynamic processes, by which bodies pass from one equilibrium state to another by transfer of matter and energy between them. The term 'thermodynamic system' is used ...
The history of thermodynamics is a fundamental strand in the history of physics, the history of chemistry, and the history of science in general. Due to the relevance of thermodynamics in much of science and technology, its history is finely woven with the developments of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, magnetism, and chemical kinetics, to more distant applied fields such as ...