When French engineer Sadi Carnot calculated the maximum efficiency of a heat engine in 1824, he had no idea what heat was. In those days, physicists thought heat was a fluid called caloric. But Carnot ...

Researchers have made a breakthrough in applying the first law of thermodynamics to complex systems. The law is a bedrock of physics, but has long failed to describe systems that are out of ...

West Virginia University physicists have made a breakthrough on an age-old limitation of the first law of thermodynamics. Paul Cassak, professor and associate director of the Center for KINETIC Plasma ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The Laws of Thermodynamics explain interactions among components in a system, including emulsification of liquids. A new surprising finding is that ...

A team of researchers led by a physics graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst made the surprising discovery of what they call a "shape-recovering liquid," which defies some ...

Those of us who remember our school science classes are pretty familiar with the three laws of thermodynamics, but did you know there's another law? The zeroth law of thermodynamics, as its known, was ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The first law of thermodynamics is undergoing a huge renovation. A team lead by researchers at West Virginia University released a paper detailing ...

The Laws of Thermodynamics explain interactions among components in a system, including emulsification of liquids. A new surprising finding is that two immiscible liquids, when influenced by ...