The Laws of Thermodynamics The science of thermodynamics is rooted in the work of the German physicist Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888), who is credited with formulating the second law. There are three fundamental laws of thermodynamics: The first law states that the energy in a physical system can be neither created nor destroyed. This is known as the conservation of energy. The second law states that a closed system will tend toward increasing disorder, or entropy, until it reaches equilibrium. The third law states that as a system approaches the temperature of absolute zero, its entropy
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