Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-b-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2010/paper-2a/section-a/1/solution

For a reversible isothermal expansion of one mole of an ideal gas, internal energy depends only on temperature, so . The first law of thermodynamics gives
This uses quasistatic expansion against the gas pressure. Specifying only the initial and final volumes and constant temperature would not fix heat for an arbitrary irreversible process: an insulated ideal-gas free expansion has .

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