Almost exactly 200 years ago, French physicist Sadi Carnot determined the maximum efficiency of heat engines. The Carnot ...

As Homer Simpson once famously phrased, “ in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics ,” but a new and completely unexpected discovery by a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst runs ...

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 ...

More than 200 years ago, Count Rumford showed that heat isn’t a mysterious substance but something you can generate endlessly through motion. That insight laid the foundation for thermodynamics, the ...

A routine lab experiment by a college student has turned into one of the strangest physics stories of the year, hinting that a simple mixture of oil, water, and metal particles might behave in ways ...

For the student bored by physics, a professor suddenly theorizing about the ups and downs of romance might have the potential to turn around a stuffy lecture. But the opposite doesn’t hold the same ...

In a new publication, Professor José-María Martín-Olalla, from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Seville, has described the direct link between the vanishing of specific ...

The dominant view in physics is simple: the laws of nature are fixed. Gravity pulls as it always has; quantum probabilities collapse with the same stubborn indifference today as billions of years ago.

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible. Since the steam engine began modernizing the world, the second ...

'The Laws of Thermodynamics,' Spaniard Mateo Gil's ambitious hybrid, fusing a romantic comedy with a faux doc about the laws of physics, world premieres at Miami. By Jonathan Holland Having in recent ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." The Laws of Thermodynamics explain interactions among components in a system, including emulsification of ...