ever find yourself wondering like how the universe really ticks you know at its core like what makes everything run yeah well that's what we're diving into today the mindblowing world of thermodynamics it's everywhere it is everywhere and to help us navigate this we've got the one and only Richard finman oh the best specifically his lectures on physics chapter 45 we're going deep on thermodynamics you ready for this absolutely let's do it Fineman he just has a way of making even you know the most complex stuff yeah feel so understandable like an engaging puzzle exactly so our goal today is to move Beyond just knowing the terms like enthalpy and entropy we're going to break them down and actually like I don't know rep our heads around how they're woven into well everything around us that's all connected it really is we're talking that steaming Cupa yeah the pressure in your car tires the energy in a battery even how scientists figure out the temperature of stars trillions of miles away it's all related it's amazing so to kick things off Fineman starts us off kind of surprisingly with this thing called partial derivatives okay but before you hit that skip button thinking wait I didn't sign up for like a calculus lecture I promise it's way more interesting than it sounds he makes yeah he makes it very accessible he does and he does it using this car analogy so imagine you're cruising along right okay and you're going up Hill and you want to know how much your speed changes just because of that hill right but your speed isn't just about the hill it's also about how long you've been driving exactly yeah how much time has passed so it's like how do we isolate the effect of just the hill exactly that's what partial derivatives do they help us isolate that one variable like the hill and see its impact right as if everything else like time is on pause that's such a good way to put it it's like saying okay for a second let's just focus on how much this hill is affecting my speed ignoring everything else exactly it's a way to understand how one thing influences a bigger more complex system and Fineman uses this to introduce the real stars of the show internal energy heat and work okay so these aren't just some abstract like physics textbook terms are they no we experienced them all the time every day absolutely think about the warmth you feel from a fire yeah that's heat right yeah heat that transfer of energy it's a form of energy transfer or like the effort you put into blowing up a balloon oh yeah that's work you're changing the energy of that balloon you're putting energy into the system and that's changing its internal energy like the energy of the air inside and those Concepts all of them are linked by this fundamental law this kind of like I don't know overarching principle called the first law of thermodynamics the Cornerstone of it all so what does it basically tell us in a nutshell in the simplest terms energy can't be created or destroyed just transformed from one form to another oh so it's like a I don't know Universal accounting system for energy that's a great way to think about it yeah okay so then Fineman he takes us a little deeper into this world introduces this thing called the Carno cycle okay and he asks us to picture a simple engine you know the kind with a piston moving in a cylinder like a classic car engine yeah and to help visualize this he uses this thing called a pressure volume diagram what is that so it's like a graph it tracks what's going on inside the engine how the pressure and volume change as the Piston okay so it's like a visual representation of the engines every move exactly and this is where it gets really really interesting because the area inside that graph the area within those curves it represents something really important it represents the work done by the engine the bigger the area the more work the engine is doing wow that's so cool and this is where carau comes in this is it this is where he made a groundbreaking connection he found a link between the work done by that engine and the heat absorbed at a constant temperature it's a huge deal okay so break that down for me how does that like seemingly simple relationship how does that change how we understand engines well Kos work it revealed the maximum efficiency you could ever achieve like the absolute limit on converting heat into work oh wow and this principle fundamental to how we design not just engines but refrigerators too that's incredible who would have thought that something so I don't know seemingly straightforward could have such huge implications that's the beauty of fundamental laws often their applications they pop up in the most unexpected places okay well speaking of unexpected places prepare to have your mind blown okay this equation that we're talking about this equation derived from a simple engine can actually be applied to wait for it rubber bands rubber bands that's kind of wild right it seems crazy how on Earth it all goes back to energy remember the ideal Gap law from like high school chemistry vaguely it's coming back to me in pieces right so it describes how pressure volume and temperature are all related in gases now those gas molecules they're bouncing around creating pressure the forces between those molecules they explain why pressure and volume change okay yeah I'm following the fascinating thing is those forces have a parallel in the longchain molecules that make up you guessed it a rubber band so just like with gases chain ing the temperature of a rubber band affects those forces between the molecules right which then changes its length exactly heat up a rubber band and what happens those molecules they start jiggling around more causing it to contract oh that's super it's a perfect example of how thermodynamics links heat force and length even in something as ordinary as a rubber band it really is and it just keeps blowing my mind how these connections pop up in the most unexpected places like Who would thought something as everyday as a battery could be explained by thermodynamics it's true the change in voltage of a battery as the temperature changes can tell us a lot about what's happening chemically inside it's like your phone battery is a tiny chemistry set constantly in flux following these fundamental principles that's wild so we've gone from rubber bands to batteries and now get this we're going to something astronomically huge you're talking about black body radiation yes black body radiation it sounds like something straight out of Star Wars right but it's how scientists measure the temperature of stars that are trillions and trillions of miles away it's incredible how is that even possible okay so imagine heating a piece of metal okay as it gets hotter and hotter it starts to Glow yeah first red then orange then like white hot I've seen that in those blacks smithing videos it's mesmerizing exactly and stars they're doing something very similar but on a massive scale oh wow they emit light across a whole spectrum of colors and the exact mix of those colors tells us their temperature so by analyzing the light from a star we can figure out how hot it is exactly and the key to understanding that light is understanding how energy is spread out at different temperatures and then my friend is a core Concept in thermodynamics it's incred okay so we've covered rubber bands batteries and even the temperatures of stars all thanks to thermodynamics all connected it's like we've been given this new amazing way of looking at the world but I got to admit some of these equations can be a bit intimidating like which one ones are tripping you up well like that one about the change in internal energy of a system you mean the one that says the change in internal energy equals the heat added to the system minus the work done by the system yes that's the one it always seems so simple but I feel like I'm missing something crucial it's actually a very profound statement about energy conservation think about it this way you can pump energy into a system by heating it okay and that system can then use that energy to perform work like pushing a pist in an engine gotcha but the total energy it always has to balance out so it's like that Universal energy accounting system we were talking about precisely and that same accounting applies whether we're talking about simple seam engine or the insanely complex chemical reactions happening inside a battery that makes so much more sense now what about that clossy clap Paran equation I remember struggling with that one back in my chemistry days ah yes that equation that one helps us understand the relationship between pressure temperature and those changes in the states of matter you know like when water boils right liquid water transforming into steam a classic phase change exactly and the Claus clap parent equation gives us this mathematical link between how the pressure changes with temperature and the amount of heat needed for that transformation to happen so we can use it to predict things like the boiling point of water at different pressures precisely it explains why water boils at a lower temperature at higher altitudes where the air pressure is lower oh that's why it takes longer to cook pasta in the mountains right exactly the lower boiling point means your water is cooler so your pasta takes longer to cook through wow I never knew there was a thermodynamic reason for that there often is but here's where things get even more interesting while thermodynamics gives us this incredible framework for understanding energy on a large scale it doesn't really dig into the microscopic nitty-gritty of how those Transformations actually occur at the atomic level so it's more about the big picture the overall effect exactly and that's where statistics mechanics comes in it bridges that gap between the macroscopic world of pressure temperature and volume and the microscopic world of atoms and molecules so it's like we can zoom in and see what those trillions of individual water molecules are doing as the water boils precisely imagine them all jiggling around with a certain amount of energy as we add Heat their average energy increases they jiggle faster and eventually they break free from their liquid bonds and become steam so it's like a microscopic dance party happening in that pot of water I like that and the Colossus clay Pyon equation gives us this amazing way to connect that invisible dance party to the very visible Act of boiling exactly it's incredible how these different levels of understanding from what we see with our own eyes to the behavior of tiny atoms all come together in thermodynamics it really highlights just how much is going on beneath the surface of what we can observe every day and we're just scratching the surface thermodynamics with its elegant laws and seemingly endless applications it's everywhere from how our cars run to how power plants operate to the very existence of stars it's true and the most exciting part is that we're always discovering new connections constantly pushing the boundaries of what we thought we knew about the universe it really makes you realize just how much is happening all around us that we just totally take for granted it really underscores the power of physics doesn't it to like reveal these hidden Connections in the universe absolutely it's like we've been given this new way of seeing the world and you know while we've been focusing on fineman's work and his insights it's important to remember that thermodynamics like any field of science it's built on the work of countless Brilliant Minds throughout history that's right from Sadie Carno who really pioneered the field with his research on like how efficient engines could be to James Clerk Maxwell and lck boltzman who Dev developed all those crucial tools of statistical mechanics it's been a team effort a true journey of Discovery and Fineman with his incredible knack for taking these really complex ideas and making them accessible to anyone he lets us feel like we're right there on that Journey with them exactly he brought thermodynamics to life for a whole generation of new thinkers he really did and it's a journey that's still ongoing right oh absolutely there's still so much we don't know about the universe and the laws that make it tick and that's what makes it so exciting right every new discovery it just leads to more questions even more Avenues to explore it's like we're constantly redrawing the map of human knowledge pushing those boundaries further and further out and who knows what mindblowing applications are still waiting for us out there as we dig deeper into these fundamental principles that's a great point it really is so as we wrap up this deep dive into thermodynamics I don't know about you but I'm left with this overwhelming feeling of awe just thinking about how elegant and interconnected everything in the universe really is it truly is all around us just waiting to be discovered exactly so next time you see a steaming cup of coffee or feel that warmth radiating from a fireplace or even just stretch a rubber band take a second and really appreciate the invisible forces that are at work right there it's amazing when you think about it it is because behind those everyday experiences are the fundamental laws of thermodynamics quietly orchestrating this incredible dance of energy that makes our universe so captivating it's a beautiful thought it really is thank you so much for joining us on this Incredible Journey Into the Heart of thermodynamics and until next time keep those Minds curious