Redirected from Thermodynamic
The field delves into a wide range of topics including, but not limited to: efficiency of heat engines and turbines, phase equilibria, PVT relationships. gas laws (both ideal and non ideal[?]), energy balances[?], heats of reactions[?], and combustion reactions. It is governed by 4 basic laws (in brief):
These three laws have been humorously summarised as: (1) you can't win; (2) you can't break even; (3) you can't get out of the game.
A thermodynamic system is that part of the universe that is under consideration. A real or imaginary boundary separates the system from the rest of the universe, which is referred to as the surroundings. Often thermodynamic systems are characterized by the nature of this boundary as follows:
A key concept in thermodynamics is the state of a system. When a system is at equilibrium under a given set of conditions, it is said to be in a definite state. For a given thermodynamic state, many of the system's properties have a specific value corresponding to that state. The values of these properties are a function of the state of the system and are independent of the path by which the system arrived at that state. The number of properties that must be specified to describe the state of a given system is given by Gibbs phase rule. Since the state can be described by specifying a small number of properties, while the values of many properties are determined by the state of the system, it is possible to develop relationships between the various state properties. One of the main goals of Thermodynamics is to understand these relationships between the various state properties of a system. Equations of State are examples of some of these relationships.
See also: thermodynamic properties
Thermodynamics also touches upon the fields of:
See also:
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump