Energetic ideas Thermodynamics can explain wide-ranging physical phenomena, from melting ice cream to evaporating black holes. (Courtesy: iStock/john shepherd) Einstein’s Fridge offers an accessible ...

More than 200 years ago, Count Rumford showed that heat isn’t a mysterious substance but something you can generate endlessly ...

When French engineer Sadi Carnot calculated the maximum efficiency of a heat engine in 1824, he had no idea what heat was. In those days, physicists thought heat was a fluid called caloric. But Carnot ...

As physicists extend the 19th-century laws of thermodynamics to the quantum realm, they’re rewriting the relationships among energy, entropy and information. In his 1824 book, Reflections on the ...

Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including ...

Learn all about thermodynamics, the science that explores the relationship between heat and energy in other forms. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Time's arrow: Researchers in Germany and the Netherlands have explored the relationship between thermodynamics (represented by the smashing glass) and quantum mechanics in a photonic quantum processor ...

A routine lab experiment by a college student has turned into one of the strangest physics stories of the year, hinting that ...

Thermodynamics is one of the most successful theories of nature that we have. Since its inception almost 200 years ago it has survived the transition from classical mechanics to relativistic and ...

The second law of thermodynamics says, in simple terms, entropy always increases. This principle explains, for example, why you can't unscramble an egg. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

One of the enormous conceptual ideas that came along with Einstein's theory of relativity was the surprise that time itself, long considered fundamental and universal, is actually relative. Different ...

For more than a century, thermodynamics has described how heat flows and engines run, while quantum mechanics has ruled the ...