POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

On May 7, 12:36*pm, Pentcho Valev wrote:
Of all the thermodynamicists all over the world not one could think of a reason why the strange waterfall depicted in fig. 2 below should be discussed:

http://energythic.com/view.php?node=208
"However we may try to go around this difficulty by not expecting the liquid to flow out at the edges, where the retarding forces are strong (sealing the edges), but through a hole drilled into the middle of the grounded plate, as shown in *fig. 2."

Yet this is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics par excellence - water cannot but flow through the hole pushed by the high hydrostatic presssure between the plates:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~yec...damentals/Brev...
Can. J . Phys., 60. 449 (1982), Fluids in electric and magnetic fields: Pressure variation and stability, I. BREVIK: "FIG. 1. Two charged condenser plates partly immersed in a dielectric liquid. (...) FIG. 2. The hydrostatic pressure variation from point 1 to point 5 in Fig. 1."

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teachin...es/node44.html
"However, in experiments in which a capacitor is submerged in a dielectric liquid the force per unit area exerted by one plate on another is observed to decrease... (...) This apparent paradox can be explained by taking into account the difference in liquid pressure in the field filled space between the plates and the field free region outside the capacitor."

Pentcho Valev




Idiot

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/qubits-...bate-10025685/
"...there is one law which all physicists hold above all others: the second law of thermodynamics. Don't mess with the second law, people. Eyes start twitching. According to a blog post over at Nature.com, a recent publication in Cornell University's arXiv e-print service has kicked off a lively debate on just these terms: can there ever be such a thing as a free lunch? The paper describes six cell battery, each cell being composed of silver and gold electrode on a graphene sheet, all suspended in a copper chloride solution. According to the paper, each cell generates 0.35 Volts, and six cells connected in series were used to power a light emitting diode. The question is: where is the energy coming from. The paper's author, Zihan Xu of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University interpret the voltage as evidence that the thermal energy, or movement of ions within the solution, is enough to knock electrons in the graphene sheet free. Graphene has such high electron mobility, the researchers argue, that the thermal energy is converted into electric potential."

http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy of the Environment, Zihan Xu et al: "Moreover, the thermal velocity of ions can be maintained by the external environment, which means it is unlimited. However, little study has been reported on converting the ionic thermal energy into electricity. Here we present a graphene device with asymmetric electrodes configuration to capture such ionic thermal energy and convert it into electricity. (...) To exclude the possibility of chemical reaction, we performed control experiments... (...) In conclusion, we could not find any evidences that support the opinion that the induced voltage came from chemical reaction. The mechanism for electricity generation by graphene in solution is a pure physical process..."

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6688
"Graphene can collect energy from the ambient heat and convert it to electricity, which makes it an ideal candidate for the fabrication of self-powered devices. However, this technology is suffering the high cost, which limits the practical use of it. In this work, we demonstrated that the cost can be reduced by using low cost reduced graphene oxide (RGO), graphite electrodes and low cost glass substrates. The results showed that this technology can be of practical value for the "battery" industry."

Pentcho Valev

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00645-0017.pdf
POLYELECTROLYTES AND THEIR BIOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS, A. KATCHALSKY, pp. 13-15: "Let the polymolecule be a negatively charged polyacid in a stretched state and have a length L. Now let us add to the molecule a mineral acid to provide hydrogen ions to combine with the ionized carboxylate groups and transform them into undissociated carboxylic groups according to the reaction RCOO- + H+ = RCOOH. By means of this reaction, the electrostatic repulsion which kept the macromolecule in a highly stretched state vanishes and instead the Brownian motion and intramolecular attraction cause a coiling up of the polymeric chains. Upon coiling, the polymolecule contracts and lifts the attached weight through a distance deltaL. On lifting the weight, mechanical work f*deltaL was performed... (...) FIGURE 4: Polyacid gel in sodium hydroxide solution: expanded. Polyacid gel in acid solution: contracted; weight is lifted."

So the mineral acid is added to the system and "the polymolecule contracts and lifts the attached weight through a distance deltaL". Then the mineral acid can be removed and so the macromolecule will resume its initial stretched state, ready to lift another weight. Is this an example of perpetuum mobile of the second kind? That is, can the net work extracted from the isothermal cycle be positive? In order to answer the question, one must evaluate the work involved in adding and removing the mineral acid (the work extracted from the lifting of the weight is obviously positive).

Clearly the problem with the second law of thermodynamics is psychological, not scientific. Scientists would not even think of evaluating the work involved in adding and removing the mineral acid, even if the evaluation is easy. There is falsehood (like the second law of thermodynamics or Einstein's 1905 light postulate) which is inherent in our civilization - you cannot remove the falsehood without destroying the civilization.

Pentcho Valev