Chapter 20

Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Key contents:

The arrow of time

Entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics
Efficiency of engines
Macrostates and microstates
Probability and entropy
20.2 Irreversible Processes and Entropy:

Examples to show the arrow of time…

Changes in energy within a closed system do not set the direction of

irreversible processes.

Calling for another state variable to account for the arrow of time…

Entropy Postulate:
If an irreversible process occurs in a closed system, the entropy S
of the system always increases; it never decreases.

Here Q is the energy transferred as heat to or from the system

during the (reversible) process, and T is the temperature of the
system in kelvins.
 Entropy change of an irreversible
process can be found with a
reversible one connecting the
initial and final states.

free expansion an isothermal process

20.3 Change in Entropy: Entropy is a State Function
Suppose that an ideal gas is taken through a reversible process, with the gas in an
equilibrium state at the end of each step.

For each small step, the energy transferred as heat to or from the gas is dQ, the work done
by the gas is dW, and the change in internal energy is dEint.

We have:

Since the process is reversible, dW = p dV and dEint = nCV dT.

Therefore,

Using ideal gas law, we obtain:

Integrating,

Finally,

The change in entropy S between the initial and final states of an ideal gas
depends only on properties of the initial and final states; S does not depend on
how the gas changes between the two states.
Example, Change of Entropy:
Example, Change of Entropy, Free Expansion of Gas:
Suppose 1.0 mol of nitrogen gas is confined to the left
side of the container of Fig. 20-1a. You open the
stopcock, and the volume of the gas doubles. What is
the entropy change of the gas for this irreversible
process? Treat the gas as ideal.
Calculations: From Table 19-4, the energy Q added as
heat to the gas as it expands isothermally at temperature
T from an initial volume Vi to a final volume Vf is

Here n is the number of moles of gas present. The entropy change for this reversible
process in which the temperature is held constant is
20.4 The Second Law of Thermodynamics

If a process occurs in a closed system, the entropy of the

system increases for irreversible processes and remains
constant for reversible processes. It never decreases.

Here the greater-than sign applies to irreversible processes

and the equals sign to reversible processes. This relation
applies only to closed systems.

The reversible processes as dictated in a P-V diagram,

however, can have any signs of entropy change since they
describe only part of a closed system, which includes the
environment.
20.5 Entropy in the Real World: Engine Efficiency

An engine (or a refrigerator) is a system of some

substance to undergo a cycle between two thermal
reservoirs of high and low temperatures.
20.5 Entropy in the Real World: Perfect Engines

To have a ‘prefect’ engine, i.e., all the

absorbed heat transferred to work, we require
QL=0. With the engine entropy change being
zero, and the environment entropy change
being

the total entropy change for such an engine to

work will be negative, violating the 2nd law.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics can be stated as:

No perfect engine!

(The Kelvin-Planck statement)

20.6 Entropy in the Real World: Perfect Refrigerators

The entropy change for the cold reservoir is -|Q|/TL, and that for the
warm reservoir is +|Q|/TH. Thus, the net entropy change for the entire
system is:

TH >TL, and the right side of this equation is negative and thus the net
change in entropy per cycle for the closed system refrigerator reservoirs
is also negative. This violates the second law of thermodynamics, and
therefore a perfect refrigerator does not exist.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics can be stated as:

No perfect refrigerators!

(The Clausius statement)

20.5 Entropy in the Real World: Engine Efficiency

Not only there are no perfect engines and refrigerators,

but also their efficiency has an upper limit!

Carnot’s theorem:
(1)All reversible engines have the same efficiency.
(2) No engines have an efficiency higher than that of a
reversible engine.

# Ideal engines
= Reversible engines

# A Carnot engine is
an ideal engine
undergoing a Carnot
cycle.
20.5 Entropy in the Real World: Carnot Engine

Heat:
The reverse of a Carnot engine is an
ideal refrigerator, also called a Carnot
refrigerator, whose efficiency, the
Entropy Changes: coefficient of performance is

Efficiency:
20.7 The Efficiencies of Real Engines Fig. 20-16 (a) Engine X drives a
Carnot refrigerator. (b) If, as claimed,
engine X is more efficient than a
Carnot engine, then the combination
shown in (a) is equivalent to the
perfect refrigerator shown here. This
violates the second law of
thermodynamics, so we conclude that
engine X cannot be more efficient than
a Carnot engine.

Suppose there is an engine X, which has an efficiency X that is greater than C, the Carnot efficiency.
When the engine X is coupled to a Carnot refrigerator, the work it requires per cycle may be made equal to
that provided by engine X. Thus, no (external) work is performed on or by the combination engine
+refrigerator, which we take as our system.

We have the assumption , where the primed notation refers to the engine X.

Therefore, which finally leads to : >0

This shows that the net effect of engine X and the Carnot refrigerator working in combination is to transfer
energy Q as heat from a low-temperature reservoir to a high-temperature reservoir without the requirement
of work. This is a perfect refrigerator, whose existence is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Carnot’s theorem is proved!

Example, Carnot Engine:
Example, Impossible Engine:
20.8 A Statistical View of Entropy
Macro-states and Micro-states
Example:
a two-phase-block case with 6 identical but distinguishable particles

A certain set of numbers of particles in each phase block

corresponds to a certain macrostate.
{ab, cdef}and{ab, cedf} are the same macro and microstates.
{ab, cdef}and{ac, bdef} are the same macro but different microstates.
{abc,def}and{def,abc} are the same macro but different microstates.
{ab, cdef}and {abcd,ef} are different macrostates.

The thermodynamic probability of a macrostate is the

corresponding number of microstates:

# Every microstate is assumed to be equally probable.

# A system changes its microstate all the time.
# The equilibrium state is the most probable macrostate.
Example, Microstates and multiplicity:
20.8 A Statistical View of Entropy: Probability and Entropy

The arrow of time points to the direction of a state of more

microstates, i.e., a more probable state. Sometimes it is called a
more disordered state.
Entropy is an extendable (i.e. additive) state variable.
Thermodynamic probability is multiplicative.
It’s likely that

One may show in fact that the constant a is equal to the

Boltzmann constant k, i.e.,

Stirling’s approximation is often used for ln N! when N is large:

ln N! ≈ N(ln N) - N (Stirling’s approximation).

Example, Entropy change :

When n moles of an ideal gas doubles its volume

in a free expansion, the entropy increase from the Now,
initial state i to the final state f is Sf -Si =nR ln 2.
Derive this result with statistical mechanics.

Calculations: The molecules are in a closed

container, and the multiplicity W of their
Therefore,
microstates can be found by:

The change in entropy from the initial state to

Here N is the number of molecules in the n moles
the final is thus
of the gas. Initially, with the molecules all in the
left half of the container, their (n1, n2)
configuration is (N, 0).
which is what we set out to show.
Finally, with the molecules spread through the
full volume, their (n1, n2) configuration is (N/2,
N/2).

The initial and final entropies are

Homework:

Problems 12, 17, 34, 43, 46