Thermodynamics MOC

Thermodynamic potential

A thermodynamic potential is an extensive quantity which is naturally1 a function of the natural2 independent variables and whose minimization or maximization follows from the entropy maximum principle when these independent variables are held constant.

Equations of state

To show that a quantity is naturally a function of parameters , one takes the Exterior derivative and shows , where are 0-forms. One then arrives at the equations of state

Examples

#state/tidy | #lang/en | #SemBr

Footnotes

  1. i.e. by the First law of thermodynamics. ↩

  2. a natural choice of variables for the situation at hand, i.e. the intensive or extensive parameters that can be controlled directly. ↩