Author(s)

Jean-Louis Tane

Formerly with the Department of Geology, University of Grenoble, Grenoble, France.

The conceptual difficulties encountered in thermodynamics are well known and are certainly the reasons that have led the great physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, a long time ago, to say that understanding thermodynamics is not easy. The situation remains nearly the same today and is due to the fact that the tools used in thermodynamics, i.e. the equations, are not in good accordance with the laws of thermodynamics. Since the efficiency of the tools cannot be contested, it is probably the formulation of the laws that needs to be revised. On the basis of arguments already evoked in previous papers, the suggestion presented below is a contribution going in this sense and inserting the Einstein’s relation E = mc² in the thermodynamic reasoning.

Thermodynamics, Reversibility, Irreversibility, Energy, Entropy, Einstein’s Mass-Energy Relation, Relativity, Gravitation

Tane, J. (2021) A Suggestion to Make Thermodynamic Theory More Easily Understandable. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 9, 920-930. doi: 10.4236/jamp.2021.95062.