6.7 The first law of thermodynamics  (Page 3/6)

In chemistry and biochemistry, one calorie (spelled with a lowercase c) is defined as the energy (or heat transfer) required to raise the temperature of one gram of pure water by one degree Celsius. Nutritionists and weight-watchers tend to use the dietary calorie, which is frequently called a Calorie (spelled with a capital C). One food Calorie is the energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. This means that one dietary Calorie is equal to one kilocalorie for the chemist, and one must be careful to avoid confusion between the two.

Again, consider the internal energy the body has lost. There are three places this internal energy can go—to heat transfer, to doing work, and to stored fat (a tiny fraction also goes to cell repair and growth). Heat transfer and doing work take internal energy out of the body, and food puts it back. If you eat just the right amount of food, then your average internal energy remains constant. Whatever you lose to heat transfer and doing work is replaced by food, so that, in the long run, $\mathrm{\Delta }U=0$ . If you overeat repeatedly, then $\mathrm{\Delta }U$ is always positive, and your body stores this extra internal energy as fat. The reverse is true if you eat too little. If $\mathrm{\Delta }U$ is negative for a few days, then the body metabolizes its own fat to maintain body temperature and do work that takes energy from the body. This process is how dieting produces weight loss.

Life is not always this simple, as any dieter knows. The body stores fat or metabolizes it only if energy intake changes for a period of several days. Once you have been on a major diet, the next one is less successful because your body alters the way it responds to low energy intake. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which food is converted into heat transfer and work done while the body is at complete rest. The body adjusts its basal metabolic rate to partially compensate for over-eating or under-eating. The body will decrease the metabolic rate rather than eliminate its own fat to replace lost food intake. You will chill more easily and feel less energetic as a result of the lower metabolic rate, and you will not lose weight as fast as before. Exercise helps to lose weight, because it produces both heat transfer from your body and work, and raises your metabolic rate even when you are at rest. Weight loss is also aided by the quite low efficiency of the body in converting internal energy to work, so that the loss of internal energy resulting from doing work is much greater than the work done. It should be noted, however, that living systems are not in thermal equilibrium.

The body provides us with an excellent indication that many thermodynamic processes are irreversible . An irreversible process can go in one direction but not the reverse, under a given set of conditions. For example, although body fat can be converted to do work and produce heat transfer, work done on the body and heat transfer into it cannot be converted to body fat. Otherwise, we could skip lunch by sunning ourselves or by walking down stairs. Another example of an irreversible thermodynamic process is photosynthesis. This process is the intake of one form of energy—light—by plants and its conversion to chemical potential energy. Both applications of the first law of thermodynamics are illustrated in [link] . One great advantage of conservation laws such as the first law of thermodynamics is that they accurately describe the beginning and ending points of complex processes, such as metabolism and photosynthesis, without regard to the complications in between. [link] presents a summary of terms relevant to the first law of thermodynamics.

Section summary

• The first law of thermodynamics is given as $\mathrm{\Delta }U=Q-W$ , where $\mathrm{\Delta }U$ is the change in internal energy of a system, $Q$ is the net heat transfer (the sum of all heat transfer into and out of the system), and $W$ is the net work done (the sum of all work done on or by the system).
• Both $Q$ and $W$ are energy in transit; only $\mathrm{\Delta }U$ represents an independent quantity capable of being stored.
• The internal energy $U$ of a system depends only on the state of the system and not how it reached that state.
• Metabolism of living organisms, and photosynthesis of plants, are specialized types of heat transfer, doing work, and internal energy of systems.

Conceptual questions