Let the closed atmospheric parcel exchange heat and volume work with reservoirs at fixed temperature and pressure , while reactions rearrange its conserved elemental inventory. For a reversible differential between equilibrium states, the first law of thermodynamics, with chemical work included, is
The Gibbs free energy therefore obeys
The first law of thermodynamics supplies this differential but does not alone choose the direction of a reaction. The Second law of thermodynamics does: for the parcel plus its reservoirs, at fixed and with no non-volume work,
Thus spontaneous reactions decrease Gibbs free energy, and stable thermochemical equilibrium is its constrained minimum. For an allowed reaction of extent , let , with positive stoichiometric vector entries for products and negative entries for reactants. At an interior minimum,
The condition must hold for every independent allowed reaction, with fixed total atoms of each element and any relevant charge constraint. At a boundary with absent species, only feasible one-sided variations are permitted. These are the hypotheses of constrained Gibbs minimization for chemical equilibrium.
For an ideal gas mixture, , where is the volume mixing ratio and the molar gas constant. Therefore
This is a dimensionless activity-based equilibrium constant, not a bare product of dimensional pressures.
For a reversible change, the first law of thermodynamics is . Using the monatomic internal energy,
Along the constant-volume leg, , so heat is absorbed. Along the constant-pressure return leg, , so heat is emitted. The work signs are zero on and negative, or work on the gas, on .
Let be the physical volume of a region with fixed comoving coordinates, so , and write . The first law of thermodynamics is . Use extensive quantities: under replication, . The Euler theorem for homogeneous functions gives
Setting yields
This is the entropy form of the Gibbs-Duhem equation; it fixes the normalization by extensivity, rather than adding an arbitrary volume-independent entropy constant.
For equilibrium expansion of the same region, the first law and the cosmological perfect-fluid continuity equation imply
Therefore , establishing cosmological entropy conservation for adiabatic equilibrium evolution. Here “comoving volume” means a patch moving with the cosmological fluid; its physical volume changes. The corresponding coordinate volume is constant. The local TeX's in the continuity-equation hint is a transcription error: the PDF correctly has .
In the microcanonical ensemble, the microcanonical energy-shell entropy is the Boltzmann entropy
For a macroscopic system, changing the small energy resolution by a fixed factor changes only by a nonextensive additive term, while . Its relative effect therefore vanishes in the thermodynamic limit.
The thermodynamic temperature, pressure, and chemical potential are defined in the entropy representation by
Thus
or, equivalently, the first law of thermodynamics in fundamental form is
Because increasing the length by requires work on the chain, its first law of thermodynamics is
All configurations have the same energy, so at fixed and ,
Differentiating the entropy found above gives
and hence the entropic Hooke law for a one-dimensional chain is
When , the Taylor expansion of gives
which is Hooke's law. Conversely, at fixed force,
The extension decreases as the temperature rises and tends to zero as : the rubber contracts on heating at fixed tension.
Classically, the laws of black-hole mechanics have the same form as the laws of thermodynamics, but this could have been only a formal analogy. Hawking radiation makes it physical: a stationary black hole emits approximately thermal radiation with
so surface gravity is proportional to genuine temperature.
The correspondence is:
matches the first law of thermodynamics and fixes the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy
A real Hawking temperature therefore identifies horizon area as thermodynamic entropy and turns the geometric laws into thermodynamic laws.
Let be the material derivative, and write for specific enthalpy. The ideal magnetohydrodynamic induction equation and Gauss's law for magnetism give
Dotting the momentum equation with eliminates the Lorentz force density. Therefore the cross-helicity density satisfies
The first law of thermodynamics gives for specific entropy , without requiring uniform entropy. Consequently
Since , the first term on the right is a divergence. This proves the cross-helicity conservation law, with flux
For the perfect gas used here, .
For a perfect gas with constant specific heat capacity , the first law of thermodynamics gives
Using the pressure-density Hugoniot relation for a perfect gas, the entropy production in a perfect-gas shock is therefore
This is positive for , as required by the Second law of thermodynamics for the physical compressive normal shock wave.
For a simple system of fixed composition, the first law of thermodynamics and
give
Thus
Equality of mixed derivatives gives the Gibbs free-energy Maxwell relation
The heat capacity at constant volume and heat capacity at constant pressure are
Regarding as a function of and differentiating along a constant-pressure curve gives
The Maxwell relation from the Helmholtz free energy is
Therefore the difference between constant-pressure and constant-volume heat capacities is
Along the liquid-gas phase coexistence curve, the molar Gibbs free energies agree. Differentiating along the curve gives
Hence the Clausius-Clapeyron relation is
where is the molar latent heat.
If and the gas is ideal, then , so
For constant , integration yields
where is constant over the range in which the approximations apply.
The first law of thermodynamics is
so, regarding as a function of ,
Equality of mixed partial derivatives gives the thermodynamic derivation of blackbody radiation pressure
Writing , we have , and hence
Equivalently, , so
The condition as forces . Therefore the radiation pressure is
At constant volume, the First law of thermodynamics gives
At constant pressure,
Differentiating at fixed gives
Consequently,
and the Mayer relation is
The specific-heat ratio is therefore
The first law of thermodynamics, with defined as heat lost by the particle to the bath, is
Thus , and part d becomes the local detailed balance identity
The logarithmic path-probability ratio is the bath's entropy production in units of .
Contract for the perfect fluid in general relativity with . Using and gives the relativistic perfect-fluid energy equation
the local first law of thermodynamics. Project instead with to obtain the relativistic Euler equation
Write . At fixed density,
The specific internal energy is
Applying the first law of thermodynamics adiabatically gives
Combining these logarithmic derivatives yields
As gas pressure dominates,
the result for a monatomic perfect gas. In the radiation-pressure limit it tends to .
An adiabatic process has no heat transfer, . With work done by the gas taken as positive, the first law of thermodynamics gives
Using and ,
Integration, followed by the Mayer relation , yields
Eliminating with the equation of state gives the reversible ideal-gas adiabat
Specific enthalpy Created 2026-09-25 Updated 2026-10-06
Specific enthalpy is enthalpy per unit mass. For a simple compressible fluid of fixed composition, the first law of thermodynamics gives
where is temperature, is specific entropy, is pressure, and is mass density. Along an isentropic flow, . For a perfect gas with constant specific-heat ratio , .