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Carathéodory's Principle and the Kelvin Statement of the Second Law

Abstract

THE second law of thermodynamics has been stated in various ways. The two forms with which this communication is concerned are: (a) Kelvin's principle that it is impossible to transform an amount of heat completely into work in a cyclic process in the absence of other effects. (b) Carathéodory's principle that all points A in thermodynamic phase space are i-points1; that is, in every neighbourhood of every point A there are points adiabatically inaccessible from A. It has already been shown that (a) implies (b)2 and, in this communication, it is proposed to explain in what sense (b) implies (a).

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References

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  2. Landsberg, P. T., Nature, 201, 485 (1964).

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DUNNING-DAVIES, J. Carathéodory's Principle and the Kelvin Statement of the Second Law. Nature 208, 576–577 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/208576a0

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