Talk:Thermodynamics

With care, I think something could/should be written (I am not volunteering). There was an article with that name which I have renamed to Thermal transport in nanostructures, I think an early editor thought that thermodynamics was short for "thermal dynamics".

N.B., the transport page also needs work as it only goes up to 2005. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

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The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E2%A7%A7&redirect=no ⧧] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at {{slink|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 23#⧧}} until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 23:12, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

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The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laws_of_work&redirect=no Laws of work] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at {{slink|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 23#Laws of work}} until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 23:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

the current entry has this as the first paragraph:

Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of thermodynamics, which convey a quantitative description using measurable macroscopic physical quantities, but may be explained in terms of microscopic constituents by statistical mechanics. Thermodynamics applies to a wide variety of topics in science and engineering, especially physical chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering, but also in other complex fields such as meteorology.

I propose editing a (single) word of it while adding these two (incumbent) sentences to/before the end:

govern --> constrain

It is worth noting that thermodynamics does not imagine matter “doing thermodynamics” like physics imagines matter “doing position and momentum.” Rather, only thermodynamicists recognize it: as a conceptual framework (“system,” “state,” “surroundings”) constraining (informing) many real life observations that are not amenable to fundamental (“material”) physics.“The choice is between these calculations and no calculations at all. Results for reversible processes in combination with appropriate efficiencies yield reasonable approximations of the work for actual processes.” p.40, “Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics,” J.M. Smith, H.C. VanNess, M.M. Abbott, 5th edition

with the* resulting edited entry being:

Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is constrained by the four laws of thermodynamics, which convey a quantitative description using measurable macroscopic physical quantities, but may be explained in terms of microscopic constituents by statistical mechanics. Thermodynamics applies to a wide variety of topics in science and engineering, especially physical chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering, but also in other complex fields such as meteorology. It is worth noting that thermodynamics does not imagine matter “doing thermodynamics” like physics imagines matter “doing position and momentum.” Rather, only thermodynamicists recognize it: as a conceptual framework (“system,” “state,” “surroundings”) constraining (informing) many real life observations that are not amenable to fundamental (“material”) physics.“The choice is between these calculations and no calculations at all. Results for reversible processes in combination with appropriate efficiencies yield reasonable approximations of the work for actual processes.” p.40, “Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics,” J.M. Smith, H.C. VanNess, M.M. Abbott, 5th edition

these suggestions are consistent with the below body of the wikipedia entry, and established references, f.ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thermodynamics&oldid=1264697212#Laws_of_thermodynamics

NedBoomerson (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC) NedBoomerson (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

{{reflist}}

Oppose the change. Several reasons:

1. It is far too complex for the lead, which should be a simple summary.
2. I don't think everyone would feel that these are appropriately encyclopedic points. The statement "many real life observations are not amedable to fundamental ("material") physics" is way too strong, plus I don't understand why you are adding "material" here.
3. Many would say that if the thermodynamics do not match exactly the experiment, this has more to do with not putting in the appropriate quantities into the thermodynamics and/or neglecting higher-order terms. Your addition seems to me to imply that thermodynamics is an approximation. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:20, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

:Ldm1954,

:1) unless this caveat is incorporated into the entry, the entry is on balance “deceptive.” (I’d entertain alternatives.)

:2) wikipedia isn’t about how everyone feels about it*, thermodynamics simply is not what everyone* has been led to believe

:3) reference? Because, no, people who understand thermodynamics don’t make that mistake. The constraints of thermodynamics are hard, but thermodynamics is famously a misnomer in that it is not a “dynamic” theory. It is a conceptual framework to which matter would be oblivious. And Wikipedia does already have an established entry for non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54zpFh0KuK0 2n]=x=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtDXIazrMo 2N]

:NedBoomerson (talk) 19:04, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

::If you feel strongly about this then I suggest posting a RfC on WT:Physics to see if others agree with you. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Under History, the current article, in a figure, lists Gustav Zeumer as leading one of the "eight founding schools of thermodynamics". Having myself written a history of thermodynamics -- [Saslow, W.M. (2020). A History of Thermodynamics: The Missing Manual, Entropy 2020, 22, 77; doi:10.3390/e22010077 www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy] -- in researching the topic I read and analyzed nearly ten of the foundational articles, by Carnot (1823), Clapeyron (1833?), Clausius (1850 and on), and Thomson (Kelvin) (1849 and on). Until I read about his "school" under History, I had never heard about Zeuner, who may well have led an engineering "school", but certainly has no place in developing the foundations of thermodynamics, which is what the history section is about. Likewise neither does van der Waals; I even would not include Boltzmann, and perhaps not Maxwell or Gibbs. {If anyone could help me add my paper, which currently has well over a hundred references on Google Scholar, to the references, I certainly would appreciate the assistance.

In thermodynamics there are questions of the relative important of engineering and physics, and Zeuner is part of this. As far as I am concerned, the person who edited Zeuner into the article is doing so by introducing the undefined category "founding schools of thermodynamics". Far more important is that physicists are unaware of the debt to the engineer Watt, who gave Carnot the idea of two thermal reservoirs (I discuss this in my modifications to the history section). Watt (and all steam engineers) also had to be implicitly aware that (1) there is a mechanical equivalent of heat -- because work out is proportional to fuel and heat in -- and therefore (2) that energy (in the sense of heat and work) must be conserved. So I think that Watt really is one of the founders of thermodynamics, although I don't want to put that in the Wikipedia article. On the other hand, I believe that the engineer Rankine has been given too much credit for the foundations, nevertheles Rankine had some remarkable (but sometimes incorrect) intuitions about how the theory should work out -- the problem was that he often knew the answer but his road to that answer was not trustworthy. This was perhaps because he legitimately had so many other interests that he did not want to devote a great deal of his time to checking his reasoning. WMSwiki (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2025 (UTC)