text: In isolated systems it is consistently observed that as time goes on internal rearrangements diminish and stable conditions are approached. Pressures and temperatures tend to equalize, and matter arranges itself into one or a few relatively homogeneous phases. A system in which all processes of change have gone practically to completion is considered in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. The thermodynamic properties of a system in equilibrium are unchanging in time. Equilibrium system states are much easier to describe in a deterministic manner than non-equilibrium states. In some cases, when analyzing a thermodynamic process, one can assume that each intermediate state in the process is at equilibrium. Such a process is called quasistatic.
  For a process to be reversible, each step in the process must be reversible.  For a step in a process to be reversible, the system must be in equilibrium throughout the step.  That ideal cannot be accomplished in practice because no step can be taken without perturbing the system from equilibrium, but the ideal can be approached by making changes slowly.
  The very existence of thermodynamic equilibrium, defining states of thermodynamic systems, is the essential, characteristic, and most fundamental postulate of thermodynamics, though it is only rarely cited as a numbered law. According to Bailyn, the commonly rehearsed statement of the zeroth law of thermodynamics is a consequence of this fundamental postulate. In reality, practically nothing in nature is in strict thermodynamic equilibrium, but the postulate of thermodynamic equilibrium often provides very useful idealizations or approximations, both theoretically and experimentally; experiments can provide scenarios of practical thermodynamic equilibrium.
  In equilibrium thermodynamics the state variables do not include fluxes because in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium all fluxes have zero values by definition. Equilibrium thermodynamic processes may involve fluxes but these must have ceased by the time a thermodynamic process or operation is complete bringing a system to its eventual thermodynamic state. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics allows its state variables to include non-zero fluxes, which describe transfers of mass or energy or entropy between a system and its surroundings.