Concept
Version 7
Created by Boundless
The Second Law
One-Way Processed in Nature
Examples of one-way processes in nature. (a) Heat transfer occurs spontaneously from hot to cold and not from cold to hot. (b) The brakes of this car convert its kinetic energy to heat transfer to the environment. The reverse process is impossible. (c) The burst of gas let into this vacuum chamber quickly expands to uniformly fill every part of the chamber. The random motions of the gas molecules will never return them to the corner.
Source
Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. This particular resource used the following sources:
"OpenStax College, College Physics. February 13, 2013."
http://cnx.org/content/m42234/latest/?collection=col11406/latest
OpenStax CNX
CC BY 3.0.