With 36 days left before the Chemistry Board Exams, I’ve finally arrived to studying Physical Chemistry. Instead of entering a serious state though, my mind floats away to what I remember as the “Four Loser Laws of Thermodynamics” way back in high school (and repeated in college). To those who do not know of them yet, here they are. I’m also putting the real statement of the laws:
Zeroth Law: You must play the game. You are forced to.
Original: If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. The simplest, most basic definition of temperature.
First Law: You cannot win that game — you can only break even. You can’t get something for nothing because matter and energy are conserved.
Original: Energy can be converted from one form to another, but cannot be created nor destroyed. The law of conservation of energy, thus heat is a form of energy transfer.
Second Law: You cannot break even, except on a super cold day. You cannot return to the same energy state because entropy always increases.
Original: The entropy of the universe increases in a spontaneous process and remains unchanged in an equilibrium process. The very definition of entropy (magnitude of a matter’s disorder). The entropy of an isolated macroscopic system never decreases. Perpetual motion machines are fat lies.
Third Law: It never gets that super cold… Therefore, you’ll never break even. And you cannot quit nor get out of the game. Absolute zero is unattainable, duh.
Original: The entropy of a perfect crystalline substance is zero at the absolute zero of temperature. Seriously speaking, it is impossible to cool a system all the way to exactly absolute zero.
And an addendum:
Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure. Okay, now back to studying.
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