State functions, also called "state variables",thermodynamic variables, state quantities, or functions of state, describe the momentary condition of a thermodynamic system. For a passage from one given thermodynamic state to another, whatever may be the intermediate conditions between the initial and final thermodynamic states, the total change in the value of any thermodynamic state variable will be the same. For a continuous process, this means that incremental changes in such variables are exact differentials, fully determined by their initial and final thermodynamic states.
Examples include entropy, pressure, temperature, volume, etc.
Various thermodynamic diagrams have been developed to model the transitions between thermodynamic states.
Read more about this topic: Thermodynamic State
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or functions:
“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)