Classical thermodynamics is a branch of physics developed in the nineteenth century, by Sadi Carnot (1824), Emile Clapeyron (1834), Rudolf Clausius (1850), Willard Gibbs (1876), Hermann von Helmholtz (1882), and others that studied heat and work and their relation to the collision and interaction of particles in large, near-equilibrium systems.
The term classical thermodynamics is used in distinction from statistical thermodynamics, which came to be pioneered from the 1860s onwards; and from non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which sets out to apply the principles of classical thermodynamics to systems which are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Statistical thermodynamics analyses thermodynamic properties by relating them to molecular-level models of microscopic behaviour in the thermodynamic system. In contrast, classical thermodynamics analyses the macroscopic properties of the system using classical laws of thermodynamics that were obtained without considering the microscopic properties; its focus is on states of thermodynamic equilibrium .
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