A thermodynamic cycle

This animation shows one specific thermodynamic cycle for a monatomic ideal gas. This particular cycle consists of (1) adding heat at constant pressure, to double the temperature; (2) removing heat at constant volume, returning to the original temperature; followed by (3) an isothermal compression that returns the system to the initial state. Once you press the "Start the cycle" button, the animation runs through the three steps, in turn, and then shows the entire cycle. For the entire cycle, the red shaded area, enclosed by the cycle, represents the net work done by the gas in the cycle.

First posted 6-19-2018. Written by Andrew Duffy

Creative Commons License
This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

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