The two laws of thermodynamics are fundamental principles that govern the behaviour of energy in the universe. They provide us with essential insights into how energy behaves and is transformed.
- The First Law of Thermodynamics:
- This law is a statement of the principle of conservation of energy. It states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only transferred from one form to another.
- The total amount of energy in a closed system (one that does not exchange energy with its surroundings) remains constant.
- The Second Law of Thermodynamics:
- This law deals with the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder in a system.
- A system with high entropy is more disordered than a system with low entropy. The second law states that in an isolated system (one that does not exchange matter or energy with its surroundings), entropy always increases over time.
- This means that usable energy tends to disperse over time into less usable forms, leading to a gradual increase in disorder.
- Entropy can be understood as a measure of how spread out or disorganized the energy in a system is. Over time, energy tends to disperse from concentrated usable forms to more spread-out unusable forms, increasing the overall disorder.