101–110 of 144 posts
So not actually "free energy", but perhaps it could be used to stage a convincing demo to potential investors.
The second law of thermodynamics isn't really a fundamental physical law, but rather a promise based on statistics that says "disorder will increase or stay constant in a closed physical system". That said, it's entirely possible for entropy to spontaneously decrease in a closed system, the probability of this happening is just astronomically small for typical macroscopic systems. Example: If you have a system consis…
This argument that the Second Law is a simple logical consequence of basic probability always seems glib to me. Why would probability demand entropy increase as one extrapolates forward in time, but probability not similarly demand entropy increase as one extrapolates backwards in time? In other words, what of Loschmidt's paradox ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loschmidt%27s_paradox )?
Now play back time by looking at that particle's post collision path as the frame of reference and play time backwards. You will find a bias in input angles for these collisions.
So this article does the Maxwell Demon some injustice. There is a key point about the demon that when he is 'sorting' the particles into two bulbs or rooms, that the gate he is working on is frictionless. In this way, you can can see that there is no energy entering the system, yet the entropy is decreasing. Now, this is where things get interesting to me (please correct me if I'm wrong here). What the demon is addin…
So this article does the Maxwell Demon some injustice. There is a key point about the demon that when he is 'sorting' the particles into two bulbs or rooms, that the gate he is working on is frictionless. In this way, you can can see that there is no energy entering the system, yet the entropy is decreasing. Now, this is where things get interesting to me (please correct me if I'm wrong here). What the demon is addin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very true, and is the case with many 'laws'. Another example is with centre of masses: Take a hollow sphere, clearly the c.o.m. should be in the very middle, yet an object placed inside has not force whatsoever on it so it isn't attracted to the c.o.m. and the idea breaks down (NB objects outside are attracted predictably). This is because this idea is purely a tool to make calculations of large groups of par…
I don't think that's true. An object would be attracted to the inner surface of the sphere because that's where the mass actually is. The shape you're describing doesn't have a center of mass the way we traditionally think of it.
The best way to prove this is to compute the gravitational force between your object and any arbitrary particle on the surface, then do the integration over all the particles (across the 3 dimensions).
The reduce the entropy locally but in the process of doing so, increase it globally. It strictly follows the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The second law of thermodynamics is as fundamental as the uncertainty principle: The former is a result from markov chains and information theory, the latter is a result from fourier analysis of conjugate variables. What would you consider a "fundamental physical law"?
Would you mind sharing a link to a proof of the second law using Markov chains and information theory? I'd like to learn more about this approach. I'm surprised that Markov chains would be involved when the laws of physics are deterministic. The Poincare recurrence theorem has always suggested to me that the second law is not as fundamental as other laws. For a finite system with finite phase space, the state of a sy…
The second law of thermodynamics isn't really a fundamental physical law, but rather a promise based on statistics that says "disorder will increase or stay constant in a closed physical system". That said, it's entirely possible for entropy to spontaneously decrease in a closed system, the probability of this happening is just astronomically small for typical macroscopic systems. Example: If you have a system consis…
The second law of thermodynamics is as fundamental as the uncertainty principle: The former is a result from markov chains and information theory, the latter is a result from fourier analysis of conjugate variables. What would you consider a "fundamental physical law"?
B. Was around at the beginning or prior to the big bang, as opposed to being the result of conditions early on.
C. What other laws, forces, constants, etc derive from.