Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium
The scope of present-day non-equilibrium thermodynamics does not cover all physical processes. A condition for the validity of many studies in non-equilibrium thermodynamics of matter is that they deal with what is known as local thermodynamic equilibrium.
Read more about this topic: Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or equilibrium:
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)