Questions tagged [thermodynamics]

Covers the study of (primarily homogeneous) macroscopic systems from a heat/energy/entropy point of view. Consider also using the tag: [statistical-mechanics].

When to Use This Tag

should be used if your question discusses the time-evolution of a mostly homogeneous, macroscopic system – for example, a cold bottle of water in a warm bathtub. You can combine this tag with for a microscopic derivation of thermodynamical laws and maybe with the other ‘macroscopic’ tags, such as or , depending on your problem. Tagging a question as both and usually makes no sense unless in the context of .

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Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon

During breakfast with my colleagues, a question popped into my head: What is the fastest method to cool a cup of coffee, if your only available instrument is a spoon? A qualitative answer would be nice, but if we could find a mathematical model or…
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Is temperature a Lorentz invariant in relativity?

If an observer starts moving at relativistic speeds will he observe the temperature of objects to change as compared to their rest temperatures? Suppose the rest temperature measured is $T$ and the observer starts moving with speed $v$. What will be…
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Why are the wet patches on these floor tiles circular?

My friend's 3-year-old daughter asked "Why are there circles there?" It had either rained the night before or frost had thawed. What explains the circles? Follow-up question: Ideally, are these really circles or some kind of superellipse?
user138719
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Why is my hand not burned by the air in an oven at 200 °C?

I have this problem from University Physics with Modern Physics (13th Edition): The inside of an oven is at a temperature of 200 °C (392 °F). You can put your hand in the oven without injury as long as you don't touch anything. But since the air…
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Why doesn't water boil in the oven?

I put a pot of water in the oven at $\mathrm{500^\circ F}$ ($\mathrm{260^\circ C}$ , $\mathrm{533 K}$). Over time most of the water evaporated away but it never boiled. Why doesn't it boil?
Hovercouch
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Why does ice cream get harder when colder?

What would seem to be a silly question actually does have some depth to it. I was trying to scoop out some of my favorite soft name-brand ice cream when I noticed it was frozen solid, rather than its usual creamy consistency. After leaving it out…
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Why can I touch aluminum foil in the oven and not get burned?

I cook frequently with aluminum foil as a cover in the oven. When it's time to remove the foil and cook uncovered, I find I can handle it with my bare hands, and it's barely warm. What are the physics for this? Does it have something to do with…
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Why am I not burned by a strong wind?

So I was thinking... If heat I feel is just lots of particles going wild and transferring their energy to other bodies, why am I not burned by the wind? When I thought about it more I figured out that wind usually carries some humidity, and since…
Jinx
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How does mass leave the body when you lose weight?

When your body burns calories and you lose weight, obviously mass is leaving your body. In what form does it leave? In other words, what is the physical process by which the body loses weight when it burns its fuel? Somebody said it leaves the…
exokernel
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Is it possible to start fire using moonlight?

You can start fire by focusing the sunlight using the magnifying glass. I searched the web whether you can do the same using moonlight. And found this and this - the first two in Google search results. What I found is the thermodynamics argument:…
Calmarius
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What is time, does it flow, and if so what defines its direction?

This is an attempt to gather together the various questions about time that have been asked on this site and provide a single set of hopefully authoritative answers. Specifically we attempt to address issues such as: What do physicists mean by…
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Explain it to me like I'm a physics grad: Greenhouse Effect

What is the mechanism by which increasing $\rm CO_2$ (or other greenhouse gases) ends up increasing the temperature at (near) the surface of the Earth? Mostly what I'm looking for is a big-picture explanation of how increasing $\rm CO_2$ affects the…
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Would a pin head heated to 15 million degrees Celsius kill everyone in a 1000 mile radius?

The YouTube video How Hot Can it Get? contains, at the 2:33 mark, the following claim: A pin head heated to 15 million degrees will kill everyone in a 1000 miles radius. On what basis can this claim be true? Some of the things I can think…
Jus12
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What is the speed of sound in space?

Given that space is not a perfect vacuum, what is the speed of sound therein? Google was not very helpful in this regard, as the only answer I found was $300\,{\rm km}\,{\rm s}^{-1}$, from Astronomy Cafe, which is not a source I'd be willing to…
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Physical meaning of Legendre transformation

I would like to know the physical meaning of the Legendre transformation, if there is any? I've used it in thermodynamics and classical mechanics and it seemed only a change of coordinates?
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