reversible and irreversible work
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reversible and irreversible work
I was wondering if someone can explain why more work is done in a reversible system than in an irreversible system ? or does it depend only on which work has the highest negative number and from there we can know which one does more work ?
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Re: reversible and irreversible work
A reversible system is in equilibrium with the surroundings, so the pressure of the system and surroundings are equal. This means that throughout a reversible expansion, the gas is pushing against the maximum external pressure possible for it to keep expanding and thus it does more work. However, in an irreversible expansion, there is a constant external pressure, so the system is doing less work to expand because the pressure outside is so much lower than the pressure of the system.
Re: reversible and irreversible work
This is because reversible work is affected by gas pushing against max external pressure and this causes an expansion because less energy is lost as heat to the environment. While in an irreversible work there is more of a constant pressure which means it takes less work to expand as there is more friction which results in more heat loss to the surroundings.
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