Difference between revisions of "Second Law of Thermodynamics"
RichardFrake (talk | contribs) m (→Entropy and disorder for dummies: sry, spelling) |
ConnieBooth (talk | contribs) (Well no. It has nothing to do with either of them. Read a thermodynamics textbook.) |
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According to this law, it is impossible to build a [[perpetual motion machine]] because increasingly entropy will inevitably derail the machine. | According to this law, it is impossible to build a [[perpetual motion machine]] because increasingly entropy will inevitably derail the machine. | ||
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==Interpretation== | ==Interpretation== | ||
Revision as of 04:26, February 19, 2012
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that heat can never flow from a cold body to a warmer one. An equivalent definition is that the entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease.[1]
According to this law, it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine because increasingly entropy will inevitably derail the machine.
Interpretation
A simplification caused by misinterpretation says: disorder will increase within a closed system.
Actually entropy is a little more abstract and the second law of thermodynamics means something like this: the universe will always become increasingly uniform, that is: heat will spread until the entire universe has the temperature and energy level (in a closed system heat will always spread from a place where there is a lot of heat to a place where there is less until balance is achieved), forces will continue to work until a universal balance has been achieved.
In this final state the universe is one uniform space where nothing happens and no work (moving something) can be done since there are no above average concentrations of energy left. This state is called maximum entropy and is said to be in perfect disorder (although intuitively its uniformity would seem to be a state of perfect order) because it has become impossible to determine what happened in the past. i.e. There are an infinite number of ways (histories of the universe) maximum entropy could have been reached.
Entropy and disorder for dummies
In information theory, "entropy" means increasing disorder. However in thermodynamics it doesn't, and creationists shouldn't use this easily disproven argument.
In thermodynamics, "entropy" means energy unavailable for work. It has nothing to do with disorder.
The often heard argument that this law disproves an eternal universe is true, since in that case maximum entropy would have been reached already. A counter-argument to this would be to suggest that the universe is still in the process of approaching maximum entropy.
Liberal abuse of the second law of thermodynamics
It has become common in recent years for environmentalists to claim that the second law of thermodynamics implies limits to economic growth. Their reasoning is that because free energy in resources such as oil decreases with time, then economic growth can only be finite. However, this simplistic liberal reasoning ignores the non-zero sum nature of free market economics, whereby improvements in technology deliver gains for all at no further cost. Indeed one of the most vital economic goods, knowledge, can be said to be free from thermodynamic limitations entirely.[2] Liberals also vastly exaggerate the limitations that natural resources impose on human economies. Some estimate that the Earth can harbor 100 billion people. God Himself gives His explicit assurance that the Earth will be generous as long as the human race exists in Genesis: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." (Gen. 1:28, KJV)
References
- ↑ “Another way of stating the second law then is: ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!’ Viewed that way, we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself -- and that is what the second law is all about.” Isaac Asimov, Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 6
- ↑ [1] Discover Institute cofounder and futurist George F. Gilder put it eloquently as follows: Gone is the view of a thermodynamic world economy, dominated by "natural resources" being turned to entropy and waste by human extraction and use. Once seen as a physical system tending toward exhaustion and decline, the world economy has clearly emerged as an intellectual system driven by knowledge.