Abstract: The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics defines thermal equilibrium and temperature. The First Law defines heat, work, and internal energy so that energy is conserved. The Second and Third Laws involve entropy, whose interpretation is contested. The entropies of all chemically important substances have been experimentally determined. The Second Law indicates the direction time flows, which is the direction of entropy increase of isolated systems. In Statistical Mechanics, entropy is defined by a combinatorial formula which can but need not be interpreted probabilistically. This formula agrees with the entropy of Classical Thermodynamics. Thermodynamic entropy has nothing to do with disorder (defined intuitively): for example, copper is purified using entropy-increasing chemical processes. Thermodynamic entropy is completely unrelated to information theory despite the same mathematical functional form being used in both. The Third Law asserts that the entropy of all substances at absolute zero is identical (conventionally, zero) for all systems.
Publication Year: 2023
Publication Date: 2023-09-28
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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