An extensive quantity scales in proportion to the amount of material, while an intensive quantity is unchanged when the system is replicated. Energy, entropy, volume, and particle number are extensive; temperature, pressure, and chemical potential are intensive.
An extensive quantity scales in proportion to the size of a thermodynamic system: combining independent identical copies multiplies it by . Energy, entropy and volume are examples.
For a single-component equilibrium system with extensive internal energy , scaling its entropy, volume and particle number together gives . The Euler theorem for homogeneous functions therefore gives . The first law of thermodynamics identifies these derivatives as , respectively, proving . Dividing by volume yields the entropy density formula . This step fixes the entropy normalization rather than merely identifying its differential. Differentiating the Euler relation and subtracting gives the Gibbs-Duhem equation . The argument requires extensivity; it is not an assumption about arbitrary nonadditive systems.

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