How to Use thermodynamic in a Sentence

thermodynamic

adjective
  • The law is a bedrock of physics, but has long failed to describe systems that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
    Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 24 Feb. 2023
  • This thermodynamic skittishness is passed on to the air above.
    The Economist, 27 June 2019
  • Part of the problem is that many people understand weight loss to be a thermodynamic issue.
    Nick Heil, Outside Online, 26 Mar. 2020
  • The coldness of deep space is a thermodynamic resource, and largely untapped.
    Sid Assawaworrarit, IEEE Spectrum, 25 Nov. 2023
  • His final words to the thermodynamic duo minutes before liftoff?
    Jeremy Henderson, AL.com, 4 Jan. 2018
  • One way to measure the amount of information is through entropy, a thermodynamic concept that is loosely related to the amount of disorder in a system.
    Popular Mechanics, 31 July 2023
  • The Big Freeze hypothesis states that the heat death of the universe will result when all of space approaches absolute zero, or a state of no thermodynamic free energy.
    Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 3 Mar. 2022
  • Give yourself every thermodynamic advantage by staying close to the heater, and don’t let furnishings get between you and its output.
    Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, 22 Nov. 2022
  • The left’s romance with revolution has always been a reality-blinder, this thermodynamic belief that things need to get bad beyond the breaking point so that people will take the vape pens out of their mouths, rise up, and storm the Bastille.
    James Wolcott, The Hive, 19 June 2017
  • Basalt stones are used for their thermodynamic ability to maintain heat and transfer energy.
    ELLE, 13 June 2023
  • Kelvin Droegemeier great example of nominative determinism — where your name lines up with your job — as Kelvin is the name of a unit on the thermodynamic temperature scale (one Kelvin is equal to one degree on the Celsius scale).
    Umair Irfan, Vox, 1 Aug. 2018
  • In reality, given the constant through-put of energy, the Bénard cells are far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and the same is true of any living organism.
    Andrew Crumey, WSJ, 2 Oct. 2020
  • Are the upper and lower mantle chemically distinct, and if so, how do the separate thermodynamic cycles work?
    Jill Kiedaisch, Popular Mechanics, 19 Feb. 2019
  • The site introduced me to the photographs of Antoine d’Agata, who started shooting images in Paris as the shutdown began, using a thermodynamic device that makes every scene feel intensely plague-like.
    Los Angeles Times, 2 May 2020
  • That reminds one of the thermodynamic second law, that entropy always increases.
    Quanta Magazine, 10 Sep. 2019
  • This method emphasizes thermodynamic changes, such as warmer air holding more water vapor.
    Lois Parshley, Scientific American, 16 May 2023
  • In the thermodynamic equations describing water, the curve that represents the water’s energy as a function of temperature has a kink at 100 degrees Celsius, the point at which the liquid becomes steam.
    Natalie Wolchover, WIRED, 27 Oct. 2014
  • One final line of evidence is in the unexpected presence of certain gases in amounts that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
    The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Does the flow of time really depend on this statistical thermodynamic process, and if so, how does that connection expand into our entire understanding of the arrow of time?
    Paul M. Sutter, Discover Magazine, 3 Apr. 2023
  • At Walt's Sandwich Place in Wauwatosa, they're called thermodynamic physicists that specialize in organic matter.
    Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 17 May 2018
  • And that means almost all of them run into a big thermodynamic challenge, because carbon dioxide is an extremely stable molecule.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Lastly, Rillieux employed the thermodynamic principle that pressure and temperature follow each other—as one changes so does the other.
    Ainissa Ramirez, Scientific American, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Featuring the thermodynamic technology that made the line big, the cooler keeps your arsenal of drinks, your morning’s catch, and your camp essentials cold for days, with sturdy portability and stunning aesthetics.
    Red Fabbri, Travel + Leisure, 24 Nov. 2023
  • This is the opposite of physicists’ idea of thermodynamic equilibrium, in which energy flows into a system only to inevitably dissipate: imagine a pot of water that is brought to a rolling boil and then returned to room temperature.
    Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, Scientific American, 9 Mar. 2022
  • The debate over the black hole information paradox rages on, and in the meantime, Benini and Milan, among others, have turned their attention to producing a full, explicit explanation of a black hole's thermodynamic properties.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 4 June 2020
  • Named for the 19th century Scottish engineer who discovered the principles of its core thermodynamic process, a Stirling converter works by using heat from a fuel source—in this case, a nuclear one—to move magnetic pistons.
    Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 1 May 2023
  • Based on thermodynamic calculations, scientists believe that there are three distinct cloud layers in Jupiter's thick atmosphere.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 19 Feb. 2020
  • Without delving too deeply into the science behind the mathematics (see here for details), the bifurcation process is based on thermodynamic principles based on energy levels.
    John Prisco, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2021
  • The findings suggest that the thermodynamic equations the theorists derived may hold universally for timekeeping devices.
    Quanta Magazine, 31 Aug. 2021
  • Traditional thermodynamic equations work well only for studying near-equilibrium systems like a gas that is slowly being heated or cooled.
    Quanta Magazine, 16 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'thermodynamic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: