Sistema FMUSP-HC: Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP) e Hospital das Clínicas da FMUSPAMAKU, M.COUTINHO, F. A. B.OLIVEIRA, L. N.2022-07-082022-07-082020REVISTA BRASILEIRA DE ENSINO DE FíSICA, v.42, p.e20190127, 20201806-9126https://observatorio.fm.usp.br/handle/OPI/47525Abstract Most books on Thermodynamics explain what thermodynamic potentials are and how conveniently they describe the properties of physical systems. Certain books add that, to be useful, the thermodynamic potentials must be expressed in their “natural variables”. Here we show that, given a set of physical variables, an appropriate thermodynamic potential can always be defined, which contains all the thermodynamic information about the system. We adopt various perspectives to discuss this point, which to the best of our knowledge has not been clearly presented in the literature.engopenAccessThermodynamic Potentialsnatural variablesLegendre transformsarticleCopyright Sociedade Brasileira de Física10.1590/1806-9126-rbef-2019-0127Education & Educational ResearchPhysics, Multidisciplinary