text: A quasi-static thermodynamic process can be visualized by graphically plotting the path of idealized changes to the system's state variables.  In the example, a cycle consisting of four quasi-static processes is shown. Each process has a well-defined start and end point in the pressure-volume state space.  In this particular example, processes 1 and 3 are isothermal, whereas processes 2 and 4 are isochoric. The PV diagram is a particularly useful visualization of a quasi-static process, because the area under the curve of a process is the amount of work done by the system during that process. Thus work is considered to be a process variable, as its exact value depends on the particular path taken between the start and end points of the process. Similarly, heat may be transferred during a process, and it too is a process variable.