This work gives a brief summary of major formulations of the third law of
thermodynamics and their implications, including the impossibility of perpetual
motion of the third kind. The last sections of this work review more advanced
applications of the third law to systems with negative temperatures and
negative heat capacities. The relevance of the third law to protecting the
arrow of time in general relativity is also discussed. Additional information,
which may useful in analysis of the third law, is given in the Appendices.
This short review is written to assist lecturers in selecting a strategy for
teaching the third law of thermodynamics to engineering and science students.
The paper provides a good summary of the various issues associated with the
third law, which are typically scattered over numerous research publications
and not discussed in standard textbooks.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure
