Thermodynamics Concepts and Applications

THE FIRST LAW of thermodynamics can be mathematically expressed in a variety of ways. All these expressions, however, are easily viewed as rearrangements of the statement that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only converted from one form to another. In contrast, there is no single universally agreed upon statement of the second law of thermodynamics. Kline [1] indicates that many seemingly different statements have been accepted as the second law, all of which, however, can be shown to be equivalent after a careful and sometimes subtle application of logic. This multiplicity of apparently disparate statements can lead to confusion in understanding the second law. In this chapter, we examine several statements of the second law and discuss the consequences of each.