The discussion revolves around the relationship between work, heat transfer, and internal energy in a system, particularly in the context of Newton's 3rd Law. Participants explore how work done on a gas affects its internal energy and the implications for work done on the surroundings.
Participants express differing views on whether the work done by the gas on its surroundings is adequately accounted for, indicating that multiple competing perspectives remain unresolved.
Participants discuss specific setups that may influence the interpretation of work and energy transfer, but the discussion does not resolve the implications of these setups on the overall understanding of the concepts.
Who says it's not accounted for? Given a specific setup, you could for example, have one piston compressing gas and another piston using that compression but with a different ratio. If on the other hand, you have a fixed container, nothing is moving so no work is being done on the container.HummusAkemi said:So the internal energy of a system changes if work or heat is transferred between itself and its environment. Say you compress a gas and therefore do work on it, increasing its internal energy. According to Newton's 3rd law, shouldn't the gas also do work on its surroundings. How come this isn't accounted for?
It is accounted for. The gas is doing negative work on the surroundings.HummusAkemi said:So the internal energy of a system changes if work or heat is transferred between itself and its environment. Say you compress a gas and therefore do work on it, increasing its internal energy. According to Newton's 3rd law, shouldn't the gas also do work on its surroundings. How come this isn't accounted for?