Change of Internal State of An Isolated System
If an isolated system is left long enough, it will reach a state of thermal equilibrium, in which its temperature will be uniform throughout, but not necessarily a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, if there is some structural barrier that can prevent some possible processes in the system from reaching equilibrium. An isolated system can change its temperature or its spatial distribution of temperature by changing the state of Longley, R.G. Van Name, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1928, volume 1, pages 55-353, particularly pages 144-150. A system prepared as a mixture of petrol vapour and air can be ignited by a spark and produce carbon dioxide and water; if this happens in an isolated system, it will increase the temperature of the system, and during the increase, the system is not in thermal equilibrium; but eventually the system will settle to a uniform temperature. In a system prepared as a block of ice floating in a bath of hot water, and then isolated, the ice can melt; during the melting, the system is not in thermal equilibrium; but eventually its temperature will become uniform. Such changes in isolated systems are irreversible in the sense that while such a change will occur spontanteously whenever the system is prepared in the same way, the reverse change will never occur spontanteously within the isolated system; this is a large part of the content of the second law of thermodynamics. Truly isolated systems hardly occur in nature, and nearly always are artificially prepared.
Read more about this topic: Thermal Equilibrium
Famous quotes containing the words change of, change, internal, state, isolated and/or system:
“Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse ... what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I can’t earn my own living. I could never make anything turn into money. It’s like making fires. A careful assortment of paper, shavings, faggots and kindling nicely tipped with pitch will never light for me. I have never been present when a cigarette butt, extinct, thrown into a damp and isolated spot, started a conflagration in the California woods.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)