An Alternative Presentation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

作者：Lee Sangyoub^*; Lee Kyusup; Lee Jiyon

来源：Journal of Chemical Education, 2015, 92(4): 771-773.

DOI：10.1021/ed5007822

• Second-Year Undergraduate
• Upper-Division Undergraduate
• Physical Chemistry
• Textbooks/Reference Books
• Thermodynamics

We present an elementary, but still quite rigorous derivation of the Clausius inequality, which sheds a new perspective on the second law. Unlike the classical approach, our derivation does not employ the Carnot cycle. The Clausius inequality follows in a straightforward way from the first law and thermodynamic stability conditions without invoking the Clausius or the Kelvin-Planck statement of the second law. The background knowledge required for this article is the same as that for the usual textbook presentation of the second law. The new presentation of the second law is, therefore, appropriate for an introductory thermodynamics course.

• 出版日期2015-4