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How do all the laws tie together?
They are the "rules" by which heat is transferred, and the results of heat transfer on matter. Breaking down the word "thermodynamics" into their roots you get thermo=heat and dynamo=movement. That is really what they boil down to (pardon the pun).
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Any way to extend your sunlight to the Earth example to bring in examples of 1 and 3?
The first law is easy (matter/energy can not be destroyed nor created). The sun loses mass as it loses energy. The conservation of mass/energy is easily calculated in terms of nuclear reactions. This means that there is a limited amount of energy, and the system as a whole (earth AND sun) is indeed losing energy in the form of energy being expelled into space that is not stored as chemical or heat energy on earth. However, the sun will collapse and supernova before all of the possible energy is used up, so it isn't like a dying battery in that sense. What happens is that energy output in the core forces matter towards the outside of the sun. Once this energy begins to fade (and a few other stages that I can't remember right now) the sun collapses into a super-dense ball and then explodes outwards. As far as the earth, at some point the earth will be within the sun as expands outward (red giant phase). After that, the only reliable heat source may be magma at the center of the earth and what high energy chemical reactants that are left.
Right now, energy for life is stored in the form of energetic chemical bonds, namely glucose and ATP. These chemicals are the direct result of capturing high energy photons from the sun. Therefore, energy is created on earth from the created energy of the sun, kind of a hand-me-down energy chain. Glucose and ATP are then available to drive other reactions, especially those that are thermodynamically improbable (causing a decrease in entropy, but an overall increase in entropy since the system (sun and earth) is losing entropy).
The third law is more of a statement about every system, in that absolute zero (0 Kelvin) can never be reached. That is, everything is always vibrating to some degree, therefore everything is "sloppy" from an entropy point of view. However, scientists have been able to create environments that approach absolute zero. If I remember correctly, they have at least come within 1/1000th of a degree from 0 Kelvin, and may have come closer than that. Most of their research uses forces that slow the electrons within the atom instead of directly cooling the atoms like a "freezer".
I hope that wasn't too wordy. My inorganic chem and physics are a little rusty, so forgive me for any mistakes that others may point out.
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