Abstract
The discussion in the previous chapter focussed heavily on the amount of energy in a system. But how did that energy get there in the first place—and what is energy, anyway? Energy is a central idea in physics, but like other basic precepts of the world in which we live, we really have no idea what it is. Perhaps the question has no meaning or can never be answered, since an answer presumably must be expressed in terms of other quantities, forming a chain that eventually arrives at a quantity that cannot be defined in terms of anything else.
In which we investigate the concepts of energy and work, define temperature and entropy, write down the laws of thermodynamics, show how entropy growth is reflected in the everyday behaviour of systems, and delve into the interior of a star.
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Koks, D. (2018). The Laws of Thermodynamics. In: Microstates, Entropy and Quanta. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02429-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02429-1_3
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02428-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02429-1
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