The law of Entropy - from Stirling engines to nuclear boil-off

Docentship lecture by Ali Al-Adili

While the second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental universal principle, the concept of entropy remains perplexing for students and researchers alike. In this lecture, we first review the entropy postulate and investigate how it was developed to maximise the efficiency of thermodynamical processes, and how it paved the way for modern quantum-based physics. We then continue to contemporary experimental nuclear physics and explore how entropy affects the relaxation of hot nuclear matter. It turns out that entropy plays a central role in how energy is distributed between the residuals of splitting nuclei. The nuclear experiments designed for investigating the impact of entropy on the nuclear scale will be described, and we finally discuss the influence it has on the dynamics of nuclear fission.

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