How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—Stephen Wolfram Writings
A history of the origins and advances in the study of the Second Law of thermodynamics, prompted by new progress through the Wolfram Physics Project. Incorporates screenshots of dozens of primary documents.
Contents Top The Basic Arc of the Story What Is Heat? Heat Engines and the Beginnings of Thermodynamics The Second Law Is Formulated The Concept of Entropy The Kinetic Theory of Gases "Deriving" the Second Law from Molecular Dynamics The Concept of Ergodicity But What about Reversibility? The Recurrence Objection Ensembles, and an Effort to Make Things Rigorous Maxwell's Demon What Happened to Those People? Coarse-Graining and the "Modern Formulation" Radiant Heat, the Second Law and Quantum Mechanics Are Molecules Real? Continuous Versus Discrete The Twentieth Century What the Textbooks Said:
Explore this link on the map →related reading
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. I Ch. 44: The Laws of Thermodynamicsfeynmanlectures.caltech.edu
- Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics-Stephen Wolfram Writingswritings.stephenwolfram.com
- 5. Thermodynamics - Introduction to Statistical Mechanicsweb.stanford.edu
- Ludwig Boltzmann - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics-Stephen Wolfram Writingswritings.stephenwolfram.com
- The ‘Heat Death’ Of The Universe Isn’t Guaranteednoemamag.com
- Thermodynamic Asymmetry in Time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
- Lord Kelvin | On the Age of the Sun's Heatzapatopi.net
- 12.3 Second Law of Thermodynamics: Entropy - Physics | OpenStaxopenstax.org
- First law of thermodynamics - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- A1: Statistical Physics - MT25www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk
- Limit Thinkingpress.asimov.com