The first explicit statement of the first law of thermodynamics, by
Rudolf Clausius in 1850, referred to cyclic thermodynamic
processes.
- "In all cases in which work is produced by the agency of heat, a
quantity of heat is consumed which is proportional to the work done; and
conversely, by the expenditure of an equal quantity of work an equal
quantity of heat is produced."[1]
Clausius stated the law also in another form, this time referring to
the existence of a function of state of the system called the internal
energy, and expressing himself in terms of a differential equation for
the increments of a thermodynamic process. This equation may be
translated into words as follows:
- In a thermodynamic process, the increment in the internal energy
of a system is equal to the difference between the increment of heat
accumulated by the system and the increment of work done by it.[2]
[edit] Description
The first law of thermodynamics was expressed in two ways by
Clausius. One way referred to cyclic processes and the inputs and
outputs of the system, but did not refer to increments in the internal
state of the system. The other way referred to any incremental change in
the internal state of the system, and did not expect the process to be
cyclic. A cyclic process is one which can be repeated indefinitely often
and still eventually leave the system in its original state.
In each repetition of a cyclic process, the work done by the system
is proportional to the heat consumed by the system. In a cyclic process
in which the system does work on its surroundings, it is necessary that
some heat be taken in by the system and some be put out, and the
difference is the heat consumed by the system in the process. The
constant of proportionality is universal and independent of the system
and was measured by
Joule in 1845 and 1847.
In any incremental process, the change in the internal energy is
considered due to a combination of
heat added to
the system and
work done by the system. Taking
dU as an infinitesimal
(differential) change in internal energy, one writes
where
δQ and
δW are infinitesimal amounts of
heat supplied to the system and work done by the system, respectively.
Note that the minus sign in front of
δW
indicates that a positive amount of work done by the system leads to
energy being lost from the system. (An alternate convention is to
consider the work performed on the system by its surroundings. This
leads to a change in sign of the work. This is the convention adopted by
many modern textbooks of physical chemistry, such as those by
Peter
Atkins and Ira Levine, but many textbooks on physics define work as
work done by the system.)
When a system expands in a
quasistatic process, the work done on
the environment is the product of pressure (
P) and volume (
V)
change, i.e.
PdV, whereas the work
done on the system is
-PdV. The change in
internal energy of the system is:
Work and heat are expressions of actual physical processes which add
or subtract energy, while
U is a mathematical abstraction that
keeps account of the exchanges of energy that befall the system. Thus
the term heat for
δQ means
that amount of energy added as the result of heating, rather than
referring to a particular form of energy. Likewise, work energy for
δW means "that amount of energy
lost as the result of work". Internal energy is a property of the
system whereas work done and heat supplied are not. A significant result
of this distinction is that a given internal energy change
dU can be achieved by, in
principle, many combinations of heat and work.
The internal energy of a system is not uniquely defined. It is
defined only up to an arbitrary additive constant of integration, which
can be adjusted to give arbitrary reference zero levels. This
non-uniqueness is in keeping with the abstract mathematical nature of
the internal energy.
[edit]
Evidence for the first
law of thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics is induced from empirically observed
evidence. The original discovery of the law was gradual over a period of
perhaps half a century or more, and was mostly in terms of cyclic
processes.
[3]
The following is an account in terms of changes of state through
compound processes that are not necessarily cyclic, but are composed of
segments of two special kinds, adiabatic and isothermal diabatic.
[edit] Adiabatic processes
It can be observed that, given a system in an initial state, if work
is exerted on the system in an adiabatic (i.e. thermally insulated) way,
the final state is the same for a given amount of work, irrespective of
how this work is performed.
For instance, in Joule's experiment, the initial system is a tank of
water with a paddle wheel inside. If we isolate thermally the tank and
move the paddle wheel with a pulley and a weight we can relate the
increase in temperature with the height descended by the mass. Now the
system is returned to its initial state, isolated again, and the same
amount of work is done on the tank using different devices (an electric
motor, a chemical battery, a spring,...). In every case, the amount of
work can be measured independently. The evidence shows that the final
state of the water (in particular, its temperature) is the same in every
case. It's irrelevant if the work is
electrical, mechanical, chemical,... or if done suddenly or
slowly, as long as it is performed in an adiabatic way.
This evidence leads to a statement of one aspect of the first law of
thermodynamics
- For all adiabatic processes between two specified states of a
closed system, the net work done is the same regardless of the nature of
the closed system and the details of the process.
This affirmation of path independence is one aspect of the meaning of
the state function that is called
internal energy,
U.
In an adiabatic process, adiabatic work takes the system from a
reference state with internal energy
U(O)
to an arbitrary eventual one with internal energy
U(A):
where, following IUPAC convention we take as positive the work done
on the system.
To go from a state A to a state B we can take a path that goes
through the reference state, since the adiabatic work is independent of
the path
[edit] Isothermal
diabatic processes
A complementary observable aspect of the first law is about
heat
transfer.
When the system does not evolve adiabatically, it is observed that
the work exerted on the system does not coincide with the increase in
its internal energy, which, being a state function, can be used for both
adiabatic and non-adiabatic processes.
The difference is due to the
transfer
of heat into the system, and the process is called diabatic. Heat
transfer can be measured by
calorimetry.
If the system is at constant temperature during the heat transfer,
the transfer is called isothermal diabatic, and we may write
ΔQisoth.
Putting the two complementary aspects together, adiabatic and
isothermal diabatic, the inequality can be transformed into an equality
as
This combined statement is the expression the first law of
thermodynamics for finite processes composed of distinct adiabatic and
isothermal diabatic segments.
In particular, if no work is exerted on a thermally isolated system
we have
- .
This is one aspect of the law of conservation of energy and can be
stated:
- The internal energy of an isolated system remains constant.
[edit] State functional
formulation
The infinitesimal heat and work in the equations above are denoted by
δ, rather than
exact differentials denoted by
d, because they
do not describe the
state of any system. The integral of an
inexact differential depends upon the particular path taken through the
space of thermodynamic parameters while the integral of an exact
differential depends only upon the initial and final states. If the
initial and final states are the same, then the integral of an inexact
differential may or may not be zero, but the integral of an exact
differential will always be zero. The path taken by a thermodynamic
system through a chemical or physical change is known as a
thermodynamic process.
An expression of the first law can be written in terms of exact
differentials by realizing that the work that a system does is, in case
of a reversible process, equal to its pressure times the infinitesimal
change in its volume. In other words
δw
= PdV where
P
is
pressure
and
V is
volume. Also, for a reversible
process, the total amount of heat added to a system can be expressed as
δQ = TdS
where
T is
temperature
and
S is
entropy.
Therefore, for a reversible process:
Since U, S and V are thermodynamic functions of state, the above
relation holds also for non-reversible changes. The above equation is
known as the
fundamental thermodynamic
relation.
In the case where the number of particles in the system is not
necessarily constant and may be of different types, the first law is
written:
where
dNi
is the (small) number of type-i particles added to the system, and
μi is the amount of
energy added to the system when one type-i particle is added, where the
energy of that particle is such that the volume and entropy of the
system remains unchanged.
μi
is known as the
chemical potential of the type-i particles in the system.
The statement of the first law, using exact differentials is now:
If the system has more external variables than just the volume that
can change, the fundamental thermodynamic relation generalizes to:
Here the
Xi
are the
generalized forces corresponding to the
external variables
xi.
A useful idea from mechanics is that the energy gained by a particle
is equal to the force applied to the particle multiplied by the
displacement of the particle while that force is applied. Now consider
the first law without the heating term:
dU
= − PdV. The pressure
P can be
viewed as a force (and in fact has units of force per unit area) while
dV
is the displacement (with units of distance times area). We may say,
with respect to this work term, that a pressure difference forces a
transfer of volume, and that the product of the two (work) is the amount
of energy transferred out of the system as a result of the process. If
one were to make this term negative then this would be the work done on
the system.
It is useful to view the
TdS term in the same light: With
respect to this heat term, a temperature difference forces a transfer of
entropy, and the product of the two (heat) is the amount of energy
transferred as a result of the process. Here, the temperature is known
as a "generalized" force (rather than an actual mechanical force) and
the entropy is a generalized displacement.
Similarly, a difference in chemical potential between groups of
particles in the system forces a transfer of particles, and the
corresponding product is the amount of energy transferred as a result of
the process. For example, consider a system consisting of two phases:
liquid water and water vapor. There is a generalized "force" of
evaporation which drives water molecules out of the liquid. There is a
generalized "force" of condensation which drives vapor molecules out of
the vapor. Only when these two "forces" (or chemical potentials) are
equal will there be equilibrium, and the net transfer will be zero.
The two thermodynamic parameters which form a generalized
force-displacement pair are termed "conjugate variables". The two most
familiar pairs are, of course, pressure-volume, and temperature-entropy.
[edit] Spatially
inhomogeneous systems
Classical thermodynamics is focused on homogeneous systems (e.g.
Planck 1897/1903
[4]),
which might be regarded as 'zero-dimensional' in the sense that they
have no spatial variation. But it is desired to study also systems with
distinct internal motion and spatial inhomogeneity. For such systems,
the principle of conservation of energy is expressed in terms not only
of internal energy as defined for homogeneous systems, but also in terms
of kinetic and potential energies.
[5]
How the total energy of a system is allocated between these three more
specific kinds of energy varies according to the purposes of different
writers; this is because these components of energy are to some extent
mathematical artefacts rather than actually measured physical
quantities. If
E denotes
the total energy of a system, one may write
where
Ekin
and
Epot
denote respectively the kinetic and potential energies internal to the
system.
[6]
Potential energy can be exchanged with the surroundings of the system
when the surroundings impose a force field, such as gravitational or
electromagnetic, on the system.
The distinction between internal and kinetic energy is hard to make
in the presence of turbulent motion within the system, as friction
gradually dissipates macroscopic kinetic energy of localised bulk flow
into molecular random motion of molecules that is classified as internal
energy. The rate of dissipation by friction of kinetic energy of
localised bulk flow into internal energy
[7][8][9],
whether in turbulent or in streamlined flow, is an important quantity
in
non-equilibrium thermodynamics.
This is a serious difficulty for attempts to define entropy for
time-varying spatially inhomogeneous systems.
[edit] History
The discovery of the first law of thermodymanics was by way of many
tries and mistakes of investigation, over a period of about half a
century. The first full statements of the law were made by Clausius in
1850 as noted above, and by Rankine also in 1850; Rankine's statement
was perhaps not quite as clear and distinct as was Clausius'.
[10]
A main aspect of the struggle was to deal with the previously proposed
caloric theory of heat.
Germain Hess in 1840 stated a conservation
law for so-called 'heat of reaction' for
chemical reactions
[11],
but this was not explicitly concerned with the relation between energy
exchanges by heat and work.
According to Truesdell (1980),
Julius Robert von
Mayer in 1841 made a statement that meant that "in a process at
constant pressure, the heat used to produce expansion is universally
interconvertible with work", but this is not a general statement of the
first law.
[12][13]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^
Clausius, R. (1850). Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme und die
Gesetze, welche sich daraus für die Wärmelehre selbst ableiten lassen, Annalen
der Physik und Chemie (Poggendorff, Leipzig), 155 (3):
368-394, particularly on page 373 [1],
translation here taken from Truesdell, C.A. (1980). The Tragicomical
History of Thermodynamics, 1822-1854, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-90403-4, pages
188-189.
- ^
Clausius, R. (1850). Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme und die
Gesetze, welche sich daraus für die Wärmelehre selbst ableiten lassen, Annalen
der Physik und Chemie (Poggendorff, Leipzig), 155 (3):
368-394, page 384 [2].
- ^
Truesdell, C.A. (1980). The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics,
1822-1854, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-90403-4.
- ^
Planck, M. (1897/1903). Treatise on Thermodynamics, translated
by A. Ogg, Longmans, Green & Co., London. [3]
- ^
Bailyn, M. (1994). A Survey of Thermodynamics, American
Institute of Physics Press, New York, ISBN 0-88318-797-3, pages
162-163, 254-256.
- ^
Glansdorff, P., Prigogine, I. (1971). Thermodynamic Theory of
Structure, Stability and Fluctuations, Wiley, London, ISBN 0-471-30280-5, page 8.
- ^
Thomson, William (1852 a). "On
a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy"
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for April 19, 1852 [This
version from Mathematical and Physical Papers, vol. i, art. 59, pp.
511.]
- ^
Thomson, W. (1852 b). On a universal tendency in nature to the
dissipation of mechanical energy, Philosophical Magazine 4:
304-306.
- ^
Helmholtz, H. (1869/1871). Zur Theorie der stationären Ströme in
reibenden Flüssigkeiten, Verhandlungen des
naturhistorisch-medizinischen Vereins zu Heidelberg, Band V:
1-7. Reprinted in Helmholtz, H. (1882), Wissenschaftliche
Abhandlungen, volume 1, Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig, pages
223-230 [4]
- ^
Truesdell, C.A. (1980). The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics,
1822-1854, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-90403-4.
- ^
Hess, H. (1840). Thermochemische Untersuchungen, Annalen der Physik
und Chemie (Poggendorff, Leipzig) 126(6): 385-404 [5].
- ^
Truesdell, C.A. (1980). The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics,
1822-1854, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-90403-4, pages
157-158.
- ^
Mayer, Robert (1841). Paper: 'Remarks on the Forces of Nature"; as
quoted in: Lehninger, A. (1971). Bioenergetics - the Molecular Basis of
Biological Energy Transformations, 2nd. Ed. London: The
Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company.