At its heart are three concepts—energy, entropy, and temperature. Without an understanding of these and the laws they obey, all science—physics, chemistry, and biology—would be incoherent. The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behavior of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Thermodynamics explains why we must eat and breathe, how the lights come on, and how the universe will end. Thermodynamics is the field of knowledge on which the modern world is based.
