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The principle of minimum energy is essentially a restatement of the second law of thermodynamics.It states that for a closed system, with constant external parameters and entropy, the internal energy will decrease and approach a minimum value at equilibrium.
The principle of original horizontality states that layers of sediment are originally deposited horizontally under the action of gravity. [1] It is a relative dating technique. The principle is important to the analysis of folded and tilted strata. It was first proposed by the Danish geological pioneer Nicholas Steno (1638–1686).
According to the second law, in a reversible heat transfer, an element of heat transferred, , is the product of the temperature (), both of the system and of the sources or destination of the heat, with the increment of the system's conjugate variable, its entropy (): [1]
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal empirical observation concerning heat and energy interconversions.A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter (or 'downhill' in terms of the temperature gradient).
Engraving from William Smith's monograph on identifying strata based on fossils. Catholic priest Nicholas Steno established the theoretical basis for stratigraphy when he introduced the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality and the principle of lateral continuity in a 1669 work on the fossilization of organic remains in layers of sediment.
Relative dating is used to determine the order of events on Solar System objects other than Earth; for decades, planetary scientists have used it to decipher the development of bodies in the Solar System, particularly in the vast majority of cases for which we have no surface samples. Many of the same principles are applied.
However, the entropy can only be a constant if the system is in the highest possible state of disorder, such as a gas that always was, and always will be, uniformly spread out in its container. The existence of a thermodynamic arrow of time implies that the system is highly ordered in one time direction only, which would by definition be the ...
The contact goniometer was the first instrument used to measure the interfacial angles of crystals. The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) gives the following definition: "The law of the constancy of interfacial angles (or 'first law of crystallography') states that the angles between the crystal faces of a given species are constant, whatever the lateral extension of these faces ...