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Updated: Apr 3, 2026

Differential Scanning Calorimetry — A Method for Assessing the Thermal Stability and Conformation of Protein Antigen
Published on: March 4, 2017
Gibbs volume entropy is incorrect
Robert H Swendsen1, Jian-Sheng Wang2
1Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
Abstract:
We show that the expression for the equilibrium thermodynamic entropy contains an integral over a surface in phase space, and in so doing, we confirm that negative temperature is a valid thermodynamic concept. This demonstration disproves the claims of several recent papers that the Gibbs entropy, which contains an integral over a volume in phase space, is the correct definition and that thermodynamics cannot be extended to include negative temperatures. We further show that the Gibbs entropy fails to satisfy the postulates of thermodynamics and that its predictions for systems with nonmonotonic energy densities of states are incorrect.
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