Thermodynamics is the study of heat (thermo) transfer (dynamics). Actually, we will be looking at how energy is transformed from one location to another, How it exchanges between heat and work, how to account for the gain or loss of energy and it’s relationship to chemical reaction energy changes. We will be focusing on energy measurements (calorimetry) and (mostly) the First-law of Thermodynamics and its applications.
To begin the study of the transformation of energy in chemical (or other) processes, we need to first develop a few terms that we will use. These definitions must be very tightly specified and understood in order to properly follow some of the more complex logic in later pages.