Thermodynamics: Four Laws That Move the Universe

Seeing how thermodynamics governs all processes that use energy to transform materials, whether the product is a pan of brownies or a cell phone; imagining what it would take to build a modern technological civilization from scratch.

Charting the key historical milestones in the development of thermodynamics; comparing macroscopic and microscopic views of the world; representing the relationship between a material's properties, structure, performance and processing.

Analyzing temperature, the most central idea of thermodynamics; investigating the origin of different temperature scales; methods for measuring temperature; how the concept of temperature is a consequence of the zeroth law of thermodynamics.

Exploring other basic concepts that are critical to thermodynamics; the idea of a system; boundary conditions; processes within systems; the meaning of the state of a system; the definition of equilibrium; a misunderstood quantity called entropy.

How pressure, volume and temperature are state functions related by a formula called the ideal gas law; contrasting these variables with work and heat; why they are not state functions; how the ideal gas law can be used to calculate a piston's work.

The values for work and heat in a system depend on the path taken to get to a particular state; noting that the sum of work and heat does not depend on the path as it is a constant; this fact is the foundation of the first law of thermodynamics.