Researchers have made a breakthrough in applying the first law of thermodynamics to complex systems. The law is a bedrock of physics, but has long failed to describe systems that are out of ...

People not in the refrigeration business often think that refrigeration equipment produces cold air; in fact, the equipment is actually removing heat from air and leaving what’s left — the cold. When ...

The amount of energy in the universe is constant and can neither be destroyed nor created, that's what the first law of thermodynamics tells us. When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

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

As Homer Simpson once famously phrased, “ in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics ,” but a new and completely ...

If I apply a fixed amount of heat to a body of water, does the time it takes to raise one degree vary based on the temperature of the water? I have a swimming pool and a heater for that pool. I ...

A team of researchers led by a physics graduate student recently made the surprising discovery of what they call a 'shape-recovering liquid,' which defies some long-held expectations derived from the ...

I find it odd that some people still express skepticism or outright denial of climate change science. Physicists derived one of the fundamental insights into climate change by 1850: Air holds 7% more ...

A fundamental rule that determines the fate of the universe The second law of thermodynamics means hot things always cool unless you do something to stop them. It expresses a fundamental and simple ...

For more than a century, thermodynamics has described how heat flows and engines run, while quantum mechanics has ruled the strange behavior of atoms and photons. Physicists have long suspected that ...