• Question: Why does the Third Law of Thermodynamics show/imply that absolute zero cannot be reached?

    Asked by stormwhite to Arttu on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Arttu Rajantie

      Arttu Rajantie answered on 13 Jun 2011:


      The actual proof is too complicated to do here, but the point is that to cool the system we need to use some kind of a refrigerator. As the temperature decreases the amount of work the refrigerator needs to do increases, and to reach absolute zero it would need to no an infinite amount of work.

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