During the latter half of the 19th century, physicists such as Rudolf Clausius, Peter Guthrie Tait, and Willard Gibbs worked to develop the concept of a thermodynamic system and the correlative energetic laws which govern its associated processes. The equilibrium state of a thermodynamic system is described by specifying its "state". The state of a thermodynamic system is specified by a number of extensive quantities, the most familiar of which are volume, internal energy, and the amount of each constituent particle (particle numbers). Extensive parameters are properties of the entire system, as contrasted with intensive parameters which can be defined at a single point, such as temperature and pressure. The extensive parameters (except entropy) are generally conserved in some way as long as the system is "insulated" to changes to that parameter from the outside. The truth of this statement for volume is trivial, for particles one might say that the total particle number of each atomic element is conserved. In the case of energy, the statement of the conservation of energy is known as the first law of thermodynamics.