Evidence For The First Law of Thermodynamics For Closed Systems
The first law of thermodynamics for closed systems was originally induced from empirically observed evidence, however, it is now taken to be the definition of heat via the law of conservation of energy and the definition of work in terms of changes in the external parameters of a system. The original discovery of the law was gradual over a period of perhaps half a century or more, and some early studies were in terms of cyclic processes. The following is an account in terms of changes of state through compound processes that are not necessarily cyclic. This account first considers processes for which the first law is easily verified because of their simplicity, namely adiabatic processes (in which no heat is transferred) and adynamic processes (in which no work is transferred).
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