text: In the early history of thermodynamics, a positive amount of work done by the system on the surroundings leads to energy being lost from the system. This historical sign convention has been used in many physics textbooks and is used in the present article.
  According to the first law of thermodynamics for a closed system, any net change in the internal energy U must be fully accounted for, in terms of heat Q entering the system and work W done by the system:
  An alternate sign convention is to consider the work performed on the system by its surroundings as positive. This leads to a change in sign of the work, so that . This convention has historically been used in chemistry, and has been adopted by most physics textbooks.
  This equation reflects the fact that the heat transferred and the work done are not properties of the state of the system.  Given only the initial state and the final state of the system, one can only say what the total change in internal energy was, not how much of the energy went out as heat, and how much as work.  This can be summarized by saying that heat and work are not state functions of the system.  This is in contrast to classical mechanics, where net work exerted by a particle is a state function.