Thermodynamics and statistical physics provide a unified framework linking the macroscopic laws of energy, work, and entropy to the microscopic motions of particles.

Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. Physics teachers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the ...

Image of argon plasma glowing a bluish color in an experiment at the WVU Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics. (Credit: WVU Photo/Brian Persinger) The four laws of thermodynamics are an established ...

A team led by researchers at King’s College London is investigating this by working on a microscopic, single-particle engine.

However, the laws of thermodynamics state that time has a direction and information is inevitably lost. So, how can both these things be true at once?

Researchers have encountered a partial violation of the second law of thermodynamics in a quantum system known as Hofstadter lattice. This partial violation has no place within the framework of ...

A great number of scientific papers and publications come out of the Aspen Center for Physics, but none quite like Assa Auerbach’s latest. The Israeli physicist’s new graphic novel, “Max the Demon vs.

A study published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) details a "Gambling Carnot Engine" that researchers report can attain 100% ...

Foundational puzzles surround (Newtonian) gravitational thermal physics--a realm in which stars are treated as akin to molecules in a gas. Whether such an enterprise is successful and the domain of ...

The third law of thermodynamics states that a system’s entropy naturally approaches a constant value as it approaches absolute zero, that is, the lowest limit of the thermodynamic scale.