Encyclopedia > Third law of thermodynamics

  Article Content

Third law of thermodynamics

Nernst's theorem, sometimes referred to as the third law of thermodynamics, states that the entropy of a system at zero absolute temperature is a well-defined constant. This is due to the fact that a system at zero temperature exists in its ground state, so that its entropy is determined by the degeneracy of the ground state. Many systems, such as crystal lattices[?], have a unique ground state, and therefore have zero entropy at at absolute zero (since ln(1) = 0).



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Northampton, Suffolk County, New York

... the population is spread out with 29.3% under the age of 18, 9.6% from 18 to 24, 30.3% from 25 to 44, 20.9% from 45 to 64, and 9.8% who are 65 years of age or older. Th ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 21.4 ms