ScienceVerseLearning path: Thermodynamics
The concepts to learn before Thermodynamics, in order. Each step links to its page and, where one exists, its quiz.
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Your path
- EnergyDirect prerequisite
The capacity to do work, taking forms such as kinetic energy (associated with motion) and potential energy (associated with position or configuration, such as height in a gravitational field). The total energy of an isolated system is conserved: energy changes form but is never created or destroyed.
- ThermodynamicsYour goal
Thermodynamics is the physics of heat, temperature and energy transfer. Temperature measures the average kinetic energy of particles; heat is energy that flows because of a temperature difference, always spontaneously from hot to cold. Its laws state that internal energy changes by heat added minus work done (ΔE = Q − W), that the entropy of a closed system never decreases, and that no heat engine can beat the efficiency of a reversible (Carnot) engine.