Scribd
Upload
22 views2 pages

Second Law

1) Time has direction due to irreversible processes like aging, baking, driving into a lamppost, or beach erosion that cannot occur in reverse. 2) Physicists seek to understand why time has direction and why these one-way processes are irreversible. 3) The key is the concept of entropy - while energy is conserved, entropy always increases for irreversible processes, setting their directionality known as the "arrow of time".

Uploaded by

Usman UlHaq
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
22 views2 pages

Second Law

1) Time has direction due to irreversible processes like aging, baking, driving into a lamppost, or beach erosion that cannot occur in reverse. 2) Physicists seek to understand why time has direction and why these one-way processes are irreversible. 3) The key is the concept of entropy - while energy is conserved, entropy always increases for irreversible processes, setting their directionality known as the "arrow of time".

Uploaded by

Usman UlHaq
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Time has direction, the direction in which we age.

We are accustomed to one-way processes that is, processes that can occur only in a certain sequence (the right way) and never in the reverse sequence (the wrong way). An egg is dropped onto a floor ,a pizza is baked, a car is driven into a lamppost, large waves erode a sandy beach-these one-way processes are irreversible, meaning that they cannot be reversed by means of only small changes in their environment. One goal of physics is to understand why time has direction and why one-way processes are irreversible. The key to understanding why one-way processes cannot be reversed involves a quantity known as entropy. Irreversible Processes and Entropy Changes in energy within a closed system do not set the direction of irreversible processes. Rather, that direction is set by another property, the change in entropy S of the system. The entropy postulate is defined as; If an irreversible process occurs in a closed system, the entropy S of the system always increases; it never decreases. Entropy differs from energy in that entropy does not obey a conservation law. The energy of a closed system is conserved; it always remains constant. For irreversible processes, the entropy of a closed system always increases. Because of this property, the change in entropy is sometimes called "the arrow of time." There are two equivalent ways to define the change in entropy of a system: (1) in terms of the system's temperature and the energy the system gains or losses as heat, and (2) by counting the ways in which the atoms or molecules that make up the system can be arranged. Change in Entropy: Consider the following fig. The free expansion of an ideal gas. (a) The gas is confined to the left half of an insulated container by a closed stopcock. (b) When the stopcock is opened, the gas rushes to fill the entire container. This process is irreversible; that is, it does not occur in reverse, with the gas spontaneously collecting itself in the left half of the container. We define the change in entropy of the system (Sf - Si) during a process that takes the system from initial state I to the final state f as; S = Sf - Si = Here Q is the energy transferred as heat to or from the system during the process, and T is the temperature of the system in Kelvin. Thus, an entropy change depends not only on the energy transferred as heat but also on the temperature at which the transfer takes place.

Entropy & the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy & the Second Law of Thermodynamics

You might also like