Now that we know the 2nd law, let's look at some consequences. To review, the 2nd law says that there is no way to turn heat completely into work without changing something else. If we had a piston, and we heated it and let the gas inside it expand, it would do work pushing against …

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The first and second laws of thermodynamics are basically simple, but there's so many consequences that you could spend a lifetime considering even all the ones you encounter every day. A lot of these also require a knowledge of  properties of matter (phases, phase transitions, heat capacity, etc.). Here are a few questions to ponder, …

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Now we move on to what is by far the most bizarre law of nature. The second law is frequently invoked, but it is by far the least well-understood. We start, as we did with the first law, with the caveman form: If you put two things in contact in some way that are at …

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Last time I discussed the fact that the atmosphere's pressure goes down as you go up in altitude. This was because a certain amount of air is compressed by the weight of all the air above it, so the higher you go up, the less squished the gas is, and so the pressure is lower. …

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