
7
Thermodynamic Potentials and
Maxwell Relations
7.1 Thermodynamic potentials
The notion of a potential plays a very important role in mechanics. Even without
solving dynamical equations like for example the Newton’s laws (which necessarily
bring in the notion of time), a knowledge of even the gross features of a potential,
like its maxima or minima (also called the stationary points), tells us about special
configurations called the stable(unstable) points. The significance of the stable con-
figurations, given by the location of the minima of the potential, is that if the system
when isolated happens to be in one such configuration, it will continue in ...