Second Law of Thermodynamics quiz

More questions about Second Law of Thermodynamics

These visible examples show the question style. LearnClash turns the full topic into ranked duels and spaced repetition.

1. 1 Easy

   What state do touching objects reach at the same temperature?

   Answer: Thermal equilibrium

   Why: The zeroth law of thermodynamics, named by Ralph Fowler in the 1930s, is why thermometers work: equal readings mean thermal equilibrium.

2. 2 Medium

   What is the total entropy change in a reversible process?

   Answer: Zero

   Why: A reversible process must creep along infinitely slowly and without friction, so it is an ideal limit no real machine ever reaches.

3. 3 Hard

   How does life exist without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

   Answer: By exporting entropy elsewhere

   Why: Erwin Schrödinger framed it in his 1944 book What Is Life?: what an organism feeds upon is negative entropy.

4. 4 Easy

   Which thermodynamic concept describes the inevitable increase of disorder in a system?

   Answer: entropy

   Why: The name was coined in 1865 from a Greek word for transformation, shaped on purpose to sound like the word energy.

5. 5 Medium

   Which physicist coined the term entropy to describe energy transformation?

   Answer: Rudolf Clausius

   Why: Clausius built it in 1865 from the Greek trope, a turning or change, and said he shaped it deliberately to resemble the word energy.

6. 6 Hard

   What are a system's individual particle arrangements called?

   Answer: Microstates

   Why: Flip 100 coins: all heads happens in just one way, but an even 50-50 split happens in about 10 to the 29th ways.