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Who Wants to Understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics?



 
 
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Old February 23rd 17, 11:58 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default Who Wants to Understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

"The attempt to understand the Second Law of thermodynamics occupies a central role in the foundations of physics: not only is it of great importance in and of itself, but it also ramifies into a host of other problems of fundamental physical and philosophical import. [...] Despite this, there has been no major international conference since the 1950s that has sought to address all foundational issues associated with the Second Law, and to examine how they bear upon one another. The time is therefore ripe for such a conference, bringing together leading figures and emerging stars from both physics and philosophy, with expertise on the extraordinary range of issues spanned by the Second Law." http://www.secondlaw2017.philosophie....de/index.html

Trying to understand the second law of thermodynamics is just as naive as trying to understand Einstein's principle "The speed of light is independent of the speed of the observer", or trying to understand Big Brother's principle "Two and two make five", or trying to understand the name "Bingo the Clowno":

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orw...hapter1.7.html
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX5ajyPr96M
Bingo the Clowno

There isn't really much to understand in all these cases, as Joe Wolfe explains:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einstein...eird_logic.htm
Joe Wolfe: "At this stage, many of my students say things like "The invariance of the speed of light among observers is impossible" or "I can't understand it". Well, it's not impossible. It's even more than possible, it is true. This is something that has been extensively measured, and many refinements to the Michelson and Morley experiment, and complementary experiments have confirmed this invariance to very great precision. As to understanding it, there isn't really much to understand. However surprising and weird it may be, it is the case. It's the law in our universe. The fact of the invariance of c doesn't take much understanding."

Pentcho Valev
  #2  
Old February 24th 17, 11:25 AM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default Who Wants to Understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

The simplest and most precise formulation of the second law of thermodynamics was given by Sadi Carnot himself:

"A cold body is necessary"

That is, heat cannot be cyclically converted into work unless there is some temperature gradient (a hot body, source of heat, and a cold body, receiver of heat, must be available). The problem is that in 1824 Carnot deduced "A cold body is necessary" from a postulate that eventually turned out to be false:

Carnot's (false) postulate: Heat is an indestructible substance (caloric) that cannot be converted into work by the heat engine.

Unpublished notes written in the period 1824-1832 reveal that, after realizing that his postulate was false, Carnot found "A cold body is necessary" implausible:

http://www.nd.edu/~powers/ame.20231/carnot1897.pdf
Sadi Carnot, REFLECTIONS ON THE MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT, p. 225: "Heat is simply motive power, or rather motion which has changed form. It is a movement among the particles of bodies. Wherever there is destruction of motive power there is, at the same time, production of heat in quantity exactly proportional to the quantity of motive power destroyed. Reciprocally, wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of motive power." p. 222: "Could a motion (that of radiating heat) produce matter (caloric)? No, undoubtedly; it can only produce a motion. Heat is then the result of a motion. Then it is plain that it could be produced by the consumption of motive power, and that it could produce this power. All the other phenomena - composition and decomposition of bodies, passage to the gaseous state, specific heat, equilibrium of heat, its more or less easy transmission, its constancy in experiments with the calorimeter - could be explained by this hypothesis. But it would be DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN WHY, IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTIVE POWER BY HEAT, A COLD BODY IS NECESSARY; why, in consuming the heat of a warm body, motion cannot be produced."

Generally, a cold body is not necessary, that is, the second law of thermodynamics is false. The cold body is only TECHNOLOGICALLY necessary as it makes heat engines fast-working. Heat engines working under isothermal conditions (in the absence of a cold body) are commonplace but are too slow and impuissant to be of any technological importance. Yet they do violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Pentcho Valev
 




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