CAS CH 112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Adiabatic Process, Isothermal Process, Ideal Gas

• School: Boston University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CAS CH 112
• Professor: Binyomin Abrams

Document Summary

Heat engines a hot object in a cooler environment is an organized form of energy and can be harnessed to do work (drive for increase entropy) When the temperatures are equal the system and surroundings reach a maximum entropy, at this point the energy is considered degraded and no more work can be done. Reversable adiabatic expansion of gas in a cylinder gas cools as it does maximum work. Overall entropy does not change as the increase in positional microstates but is countered by decrease in energetic microstates. If the same amount of compression was done on the gas by the surroundings, then the temperature would return to the original value: therefore reversible, no energy is degraded. Irreversible adiabatic expansion of gas in a cylinder. Gas cools les as it does less than maximum work. Overall entropy increases as larger increase in positional microstates than decrease in energetic microstates.