The first and second law of thermodynamics | Basic Physics for IIT JAM PDF Download

The First Law Of Thermodynamics
The laws of thermodynamics are deceptively simple to state, but they are far-reaching in their consequences. The first law asserts that if heat is recognized as a form of energy, then the total energy of a system plus its surroundings is conserved; in other words, the total energy of the universe remains constant.
The first law is put into action by considering the flow of energy across the boundary separating a system from its surroundings. Consider the classic example of a gas enclosed in a cylinder with a movable piston. The walls of the cylinder act as the boundary separating the gas inside from the world outside, and the movable piston provides a mechanism for the gas to do work by expanding against the force holding the piston (assumed frictionless) in place. If the gas does work W as it expands, and/or absorbs heat Q from its surroundings through the walls of the cylinder, then this corresponds to a net flow of energy W − Q across the boundary to the surroundings. In order to conserve the total energy U, there must be a counterbalancing change
ΔU = Q − W (1) 
in the internal energy of the gas. The first law provides a kind of strict energy accounting system in which the change in the energy account (ΔU) equals the difference between deposits (Q) and withdrawals (W).
There is an important distinction between the quantity ΔU and the related energy quantities Q and W. Since the internal energy U is characterized entirely by the quantities (or parameters) that uniquely determine the state of the system at equilibrium, it is said to be a state function such that any change in energy is determined entirely by the initial (i) and final (f) states of the system: ΔU = U_f − U_i. However, Q and W are not state functions. Just as in the example of a bursting balloon, the gas inside may do no work at all in reaching its final expanded state, or it could do maximum work by expanding inside a cylinder with a movable piston to reach the same final state. All that is required is that the change in energy (ΔU) remain the same. By analogy, the same change in one’s bank account could be achieved by many different combinations of deposits and withdrawals. Thus, Q and W are not state functions, because their values depend on the particular process (or path) connecting the same initial and final states. Just as it is more meaningful to speak of the balance in one’s bank account than its deposit or withdrawal content, it is only meaningful to speak of the internal energy of a system and not its heat or work content.
From a formal mathematical point of view, the incremental change dU in the internal energy is an exact differential (see differential equation), while the corresponding incremental changes d′Q and d′W in heat and work are not, because the definite integrals of these quantities are path-dependent. These concepts can be used to great advantage in a precise mathematical formulation of thermodynamics (see below Thermodynamic properties and relations).

Heat engines
The classic example of a heat engine is a steam engine, although all modern engines follow the same principles. Steam engines operate in a cyclic fashion, with the piston moving up and down once for each cycle. Hot high-pressure steam is admitted to the cylinder in the first half of each cycle, and then it is allowed to escape again in the second half. The overall effect is to take heat Q₁ generated by burning a fuel to make steam, convert part of it to do work, and exhaust the remaining heat Q₂ to the environment at a lower temperature. The net heat energy absorbed is then Q = Q₁ − Q₂. Since the engine returns to its initial state, its internal energy U does not change (ΔU = 0). Thus, by the first law of thermodynamics, the work done for each complete cycle must be W = Q₁ − Q₂. In other words, the work done for each complete cycle is just the difference between the heat Q₁ absorbed by the engine at a high temperature and the heat Q₂ exhausted at a lower temperature. The power of thermodynamics is that this conclusion is completely independent of the detailed working mechanism of the engine. It relies only on the overall conservation of energy, with heat regarded as a form of energy.
In order to save money on fuel and avoid contaminating the environment with waste heat, engines are designed to maximize the conversion of absorbed heat Q₁ into useful work and to minimize the waste heat Q₂. The Carnot efficiency (η) of an engine is defined as the ratio W/Q₁—i.e., the fraction of Q₁ that is converted into work. Since W = Q₁ − Q₂, the efficiency also can be expressed in the form

If there were no waste heat at all, then Q₂ = 0 and η = 1, corresponding to 100 percent efficiency. While reducing friction in an engine decreases waste heat, it can never be eliminated; therefore, there is a limit on how small Q₂ can be and thus on how large the efficiency can be. This limitation is a fundamental law of nature—in fact, the second law of thermodynamics (see below).

Isothermal and adiabatic processes
Because heat engines may go through a complex sequence of steps, a simplified model is often used to illustrate the principles of thermodynamics. In particular, consider a gas that expands and contracts within a cylinder with a movable piston under a prescribed set of conditions. There are two particularly important sets of conditions. One condition, known as an isothermal expansion, involves keeping the gas at a constant temperature. As the gas does work against the restraining force of the piston, it must absorb heat in order to conserve energy. Otherwise, it would cool as it expands (or conversely heat as it is compressed). This is an example of a process in which the heat absorbed is converted entirely into work with 100 percent efficiency. The process does not violate fundamental limitations on efficiency, however, because a single expansion by itself is not a cyclic process.
The second condition, known as an adiabatic expansion (from the Greek adiabatos, meaning “impassable”), is one in which the cylinder is assumed to be perfectly insulated so that no heat can flow into or out of the cylinder. In this case the gas cools as it expands, because, by the first law, the work done against the restraining force on the piston can only come from the internal energy of the gas. Thus, the change in the internal energy of the gas must be ΔU = −W, as manifested by a decrease in its temperature. The gas cools, even though there is no heat flow, because it is doing work at the expense of its own internal energy. The exact amount of cooling can be calculated from the heat capacity of the gas.
Many natural phenomena are effectively adiabatic because there is insufficient time for significant heat flow to occur. For example, when warm air rises in the atmosphere, it expands and cools as the pressure drops with altitude, but air is a good thermal insulator, and so there is no significant heat flow from the surrounding air. In this case the surrounding air plays the roles of both the insulated cylinder walls and the movable piston. The warm air does work against the pressure provided by the surrounding air as it expands, and so its temperature must drop. A more-detailed analysis of this adiabatic expansion explains most of the decrease of temperature with altitude, accounting for the familiar fact that it is colder at the top of a mountain than at its base.

The Second Law Of Thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics asserts that energy must be conserved in any process involving the exchange of heat and work between a system and its surroundings. A machine that violated the first law would be called a perpetual motion machine of the first kind because it would manufacture its own energy out of nothing and thereby run forever. Such a machine would be impossible even in theory. However, this impossibility would not prevent the construction of a machine that could extract essentially limitless amounts of heat from its surroundings (earth, air, and sea) and convert it entirely into work. Although such a hypothetical machine would not violate conservation of energy, the total failure of inventors to build such a machine, known as a perpetual motion machine of the second kind, led to the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics can be precisely stated in the following two forms, as originally formulated in the 19th century by the Scottish physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, respectively:

A cyclic transformation whose only final result is to transform heat extracted from a source which is at the same temperature throughout into work is impossible.

A cyclic transformation whose only final result is to transfer heat from a body at a given temperature to a body at a higher temperature is impossible.

The two statements are in fact equivalent because, if the first were possible, then the work obtained could be used, for example, to generate electricity that could then be discharged through an electric heater installed in a body at a higher temperature. The net effect would be a flow of heat from a lower temperature to a higher temperature, thereby violating the second (Clausius) form of the second law. Conversely, if the second form were possible, then the heat transferred to the higher temperature could be used to run a heat engine that would convert part of the heat into work. The final result would be a conversion of heat into work at constant temperature—a violation of the first (Kelvin) form of the second law.
Central to the following discussion of entropy is the concept of a heat reservoir capable of providing essentially limitless amounts of heat at a fixed temperature. This is of course an idealization, but the temperature of a large body of water such as the Atlantic Ocean does not materially change if a small amount of heat is withdrawn to run a heat engine. The essential point is that the heat reservoir is assumed to have a well-defined temperature that does not change as a result of the process being considered.