00-123 Elliott H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason

A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (34K, LaTex) Mar 23, 00

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Abstract. This paper is a non-technical, informal presentation of our theory of the second law of thermodynamics as a law that is independent of statistical mechanics and that is derivable solely from certain simple assumptions about adiabatic processes for macroscopic systems. It is not necessary to assume a-priori concepts such as "heat", "hot and cold", "temperature". These are derivable from entropy, whose existence we derive from the basic assumptions. See mp_arc 99-37 and 98-339.

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