ABSTRACT
As the word implies, thermodynamics deals with heat transfers. The steam engine was one of the first such devices, designed to convert thermal energy into mechanical work. An isometric process, sometimes called an isochoric process, is a constant-volume process. Heat will be transferred from the metal to the water, and the two will eventually reach thermal equilibrium at some intermediate temperature. A thermal cycle consists of several separate thermal processes in which the system ends up at its starting conditions. The “performance” of a refrigerators and air conditioners is based on their purpose – to extract heat from the low-temperature reservoir. From the second law of thermodynamics, all heat engines must exhaust some heat. A thermal pump operating as an air conditioner in summer extracts 1000 J of heat from the interior of a house for every 400 J of electric energy required to operate it.
