Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. Physics teachers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the ...

Quantum thermodynamics has emerged as an innovative field that integrates the principles of quantum mechanics with classical thermodynamic concepts to describe systems beyond equilibrium. Central to ...

Physicists have upended a foundational law of materials science by heating gold to over 19,000°C — more than 14 times its ...

One of the most fundamental rules of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, has for the first time been shown not to hold for microscopic systems. The demonstration, by chemical physicists in ...

Learn all about thermodynamics, the science that explores the relationship between heat and energy in other forms. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

As physicists extend the 19th-century laws of thermodynamics to the quantum realm, they’re rewriting the relationships among energy, entropy and information. In his 1824 book, Reflections on the ...

The present-day atmosphere is in a unique state far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This uniqueness is for instance reflected in the high concentration of molecular oxygen and the low relative ...

Pity the poor thermodynamics student of the future. As difficult as thermo can be for budding engineers to learn, it is going to get a lot more complicated if a recently published theory is true.

An MIT physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties. Popular hypotheses credit a primordial ...