Second Law of Thermodynamics - Sixty Symbols
Professor Mike Merrifield discusses aspects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Referencing the work of Kelvin and Clausius, among others! Professor Merrifield is the Head of the School of...
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I thought we'd talk about the laws of thermodynamics, and maybe the second law in particular. So there are four laws: there are laws one to three, and then there's law zero, which I suspect was slotted in after the first three laws, and is actually, in some sense, also the most trivial of them. Which is why it's probably called the zeroth law. So the zeroth law just basically says: If you've got three bodies -- call them A, B and C -- if A and B are in thermal equilibrium with each other, which is just a fancy way of saying they're the same temperature, which means if you put them together no heat flows from one to the other. So if A and B are in thermal equilibrium, and if A and C are in thermal equilibrium, then B and C will be in th...
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I thought we'd talk about the laws of thermodynamics, and maybe the second law in particular. So there are four laws: there are laws one to three, and then there's law zero, which I suspect was slotted in after the first three laws, and is actually, in some sense, also the most trivial of them. Which is why it's probably called the zeroth law. So the zeroth law just basically says: If you've got three bodies -- call them A, B and C -- if A and B are in thermal equilibrium with each other, which is just a fancy way of saying they're the same temperature, which means if you put them together no heat flows from one to the other. So if A and B are in thermal equilibrium, and if A and C are in thermal equilibrium, then B and C will be in th...
