Le Chatelier's principle

From SklogWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Le Chatelier's principle describes the stability of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium[1][2]:

In response to small deviations away from equilibrium, the system will change in a manner that restores equilibrium.

This translates to conditions on the second derivatives of thermodynamic potentials such as entropy, . For instance, the entropy is a concave function of its arguments such as internal energy. Thus, one has

Similarly, specific heats can be shown to be positive definite.

References[edit]

Related reading