Thermodynamics as a research area investigates the fundamental laws governing energy, entropy, and the macroscopic behavior of physical systems at or near equilibrium, and their extensions to nonequilibrium processes. It encompasses the formulation and application of the four laws of thermodynamics, characterization of state functions, phase behavior, and thermodynamic potentials, and rigorous derivation of efficiency limits for engines, refrigerators, and energy conversion devices. Contemporary research integrates classical, statistical, and quantum thermodynamics to study emergent phenomena, irreversible processes, fluctuation theorems, and information–thermodynamics connections in complex, soft-matter, biological, and nanoscale systems.
If there's one thing we humans are good at, it's producing heat: significant amounts, and in many cases most of the energy we generate and put into our systems we lose as heat, whether it be our appliances, our transportation, ...
Nanomaterials
Jun 27, 2024
0
426
Every computing system, biological or synthetic, from cells to brains to laptops, has a cost. This isn't the price, which is easy to discern, but an energy cost connected to the work required to run a program and the heat ...
General Physics
May 13, 2024
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268
A longstanding problem in physics has finally been cracked by Professor Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary University of London's School of Physical and Chemical Sciences. His research, published in Physical Review E, unveils ...
General Physics
Mar 18, 2024
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345
Entropy is often associated with disorder and chaos, but in biology it is related to energy efficiency and is closely linked to metabolism, the set of chemical reactions that sustain life.
Bio & Medicine
Mar 6, 2024
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108
Our physical, 3D world consists of just two types of particles: bosons, which include light and the famous Higgs boson; and fermions—the protons, neutrons, and electrons that comprise all the "stuff," present company included.
Quantum Physics
Feb 21, 2024
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2638
A new study led by scientists from Spain and Germany has found a fundamental asymmetry showing that heating is consistently faster than cooling, challenging conventional expectations and introducing the concept of "thermal ...
The equations that describe physical systems often assume that measurable features of the system—temperature or chemical potential, for example—can be known exactly. But the real world is messier than that, and uncertainty ...
General Physics
Jan 15, 2024
2
213
Obtaining useful work from random fluctuations in a system at thermal equilibrium has long been considered impossible. In fact, in the 1960s eminent American physicist Richard Feynman effectively shut down further inquiry ...
Nanomaterials
Aug 18, 2023
7
2667
Hot bodies emit heat in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Lightbulbs and night vision cameras are examples of technologies based on this physical phenomenon. Our daily experience tells us that heat is always directed ...
Nanophysics
Mar 30, 2023
1
278
Pyroelectric catalysis (pyro-catalysis) can convert environmental temperature fluctuations into clean chemical energy, such as hydrogen. However, compared with the more common catalysis strategy, such as photocatalysis, pyro-catalysis ...
Nanomaterials
Jan 11, 2023
0
85
