Convention, OK, this negative sign is just a pure convention. You just got to use it all the time. If you use an old textbook, written when I was taking thermodynamics, they have the opposite convention, and it's very confusing. But now we've all agreed on this convention, and work is going to be with the negative sign here.

系统对外界做功的符号为负,这就是我们,在本课中的规定，纯粹出于统一符号的需要，有些教科书中，可能会使用相反的符号规定,注意不要混淆了，这门课上,我们将一直使用。

麻省理工公开课 - 热力学与动力学课程节选

They're opposites for the pathway A.

对路径A，它们的符号是相反的。

麻省理工公开课 - 热力学与动力学课程节选

sa So we have 1 s a, and we're drawing this as having a positive amplitude, but since we have destructive interference we're going to draw 1 s b as having the opposite sign, so we have a plus and a minus in terms of signs.

我们有，我们把这画成一个正的振幅，但因为我们是相消干涉,我们把1sb画成相反的符号，所以我们有一正一负两个符号。

麻省理工公开课 - 化学原理课程节选