What's the difference between isothermal and adiabatic processes?

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter AxiomOfChoice
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Adiabatic Isothermal
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
3 replies · 7K views
AxiomOfChoice
Messages
531
Reaction score
1
What's the difference?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Well, from what I can tell, saying a transformation of a system is isothermal indicates no net change in the internal energy of the system, implying [itex]\Delta U = 0[/itex], implying [itex]W = -\Delta Q[/itex]. Adiabatic changes only entail no heat being added or subtracted to or from the system. So there isn't necessarily a zero change in U, since the system can do work, or have work done on it.

Is everything I've said right?