Re: "Can the Second Law of Thermodynamics Be Circumvented?"



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Danny Dot
www.mobbinggonemad.org


"Gua" <gua@isp,com> wrote in message
news:1dedc$44e3409e$d8080eb4$22638@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Can the Second Law of Thermodynamics Be Circumvented?"

The validity of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics seems to
be beyond question. Under the first law, the total energy content of a
closed system must remain constant. Under the second law, the availability
of that energy for useful purposes must always decrease or remain
constant. In effect, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that you can't
win and the Second Law states that, furthermore, you can't break even. The
First Law of Thermodynamics is unquestionably true, energy can neither be
created nor destroyed, General Relativity not withstanding. The Second Law
of Thermodynamics stands on less firm ground because it is a law based
upon statistics. As such, it is in the same category as an actuarial
table. An insurance company can predict quite accurately how many people
will die in a given year. They cannot
predict who those people will be. Statistical laws are valid for large
numbers of events; they become less significant as the number of events is
reduced. As an example, if one patronizes a casino, he might initially win
a large sum of money playing a slot machine, but if he continues to play
he not only will give all his winnings back to the casino, he will sustain
a significant loss. The question then arises as to whether it is possible
to by-pass the Second Law of
Thermodynamics though the use of nanomachines. (A nanomachine is a
mechanism whose significant dimensions are measured in nanometers, the
size scale of atoms.)


I took a class in the design of power plants as a civil engineering student.
To design a power plant (or any "heat engine, e.g. an internal combustion
engine) the second law is used very straight forward. It is an essential
part in designing a power plant.

Danny Dot
www.mobbinggonemad.org


One who observes Brownian motion in a microscope might reasonably
conclude that, in principle at least, a nanomachine could be built which
would bypass the Second Law of Thermodynamics. When a liquid containing
microscopic particles is observed, the particles are seen to be in
continuous (Brownian) motion. That motion is caused by random thermal
impacts between the molecules of the liquid and the particles. If the
thermal motion of water molecules can produce a visibly observable motion
in particles which are at least 10^15 times as massive, it certainly not
unreasonable to believe that suitable nanomachines could organize the
effect to produce a useful mechanical output. The postulated nanomachines
would then be able to export energy to the outside environment that it
obtained by reducing the temperature of the liquid. The exported energy
would be converted to heat and raise the temperature of the external
environment as the output performed useful work. The resultant temperature
difference between the environment and the liquid will then cause the
energy which had done useful work to flow back into the liquid to return
it to its original temperature and allows the process to continue
indefinitely.

James Clark Maxwell proposed a hypothetical perpetual motion machine,
known as Maxwell's Demon, which was not proven to be theoretically
unworkable for 75 years. In that machine, Maxwell imagined that a demon
controlled a microscopic gate between two gas filled chambers. Making use
of the fact that, in a gas, the velocity of the molecules is random and
that the temperature of the gas is determined by the mean velocity of
those molecules, Maxwell proposed the concept that, if an appropriate
demon existed, he could sense the speed of molecules approaching the gate
and open the gate only when a fast molecule approached it from one side or
when a slow molecule approached it from the other side. By operating the
gate in this manner, the demon would sort the molecules so that one
chamber contained fast molecules and the other chamber contained slow
molecules. Since the temperature of a gas is determined by the mean
velocity of its molecules, such a process will maintain a temperature
difference between the chambers that can be exploited to produce useful
work in a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It took 75
years before a rigorous proof was found which was able to show that the
energy required for Maxwell's Demon to identify the fast and slow
molecules and allow the gate to operate was at least as great as the
energy that could be released and Maxwell's Demon was shown to be an
unworkable concept.

There is a modification to the concept of Maxwell's Demon for which
there is, at least as yet, no valid theoretical objection. Suppose that
the two chambers of the Maxwell's Demon example no longer rely on a demon
but are separated by a diffusion membrane having a permeability from side
A to side B which is higher than the permeability from side B to side A,
as shown in the figure below. The energy required to allow the membrane to
make the decisions it needs to make in order for it to function in this
manner is available in the kinetic energy of the gas molecules passing
through it. In diffusing through the membrane, molecules can provide the
energy needed by being slowed from their average room temperature velocity
of about 1300 feet per second to a much lower exit velocity. The lower
velocity of the gas leaving the membrane means that side B is colder than
the ambient temperature. The loss of kinetic energy by the molecules as
they pass though membrane provides the energy required to operate the
differential diffusion mechanism in the membrane pores, and the membrane
becomes warmer than the ambient temperature. If the surface areas are
sufficiently large, the temperature of the gas on both sides of the
membrane and of the membrane itself must remain close to the temperature
of the environment. As a result, the pressure in chamber B will be higher
than the pressure in chamber A. That difference in pressure can be used to
operate a turbine and provide useful output power. As the gas flowing
through the turbine produces output power, the chambers are cooled below
the ambient temperature and energy flows from the environment to the
chambers to replace the energy delivered by the turbine. The arrangement
would extract useful energy from its environment in direct contradiction
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. See
http://einsteinhoax.com/cf153.gif.

Conceptually, the membrane might be constructed with pores that were
covered by pring-loaded trapdoors, as shown in
http://einsteinhoax.com/cf154.gif. In this illustration, a molecule
represented by a ball approaches the right side of the membrane at a
velocity, which was appropriate to its temperature, knock the trapdoor
open, and pass through it. A similar molecule approaching the trapdoor
from the left side would bounce back and not pass through to the right
side. When the molecule on the right passed through the trapdoor, it would
lose most of its kinetic energy to the trapdoor and exit at a low
velocity. As a result, the trapdoor and the membrane would be heated and
the molecule which passed though it would be cooled. The process
would generate a local temperature difference that would quickly be
equalized by any reasonable level of heat transfer.

The first theoretical objection to this type of perpetual motion
machine that the author has found in literature is that it cannot work
because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is hardly a
valid objection since the arrangement is specifically designed to bypass
the limitations of that law. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a
statistical law and it is not binding on nanomachinery since such
mechanisms deal with molecules on an individual basis and the pores of the
assumed diffusion membranes certainly qualify as nanomechanisms. (The
Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Entropy increase if you
prefer, does apply to the membrane itself and to the gas in the chambers
since they involve large numbers of randomly interacting
particles. It does not apply to the pores of the diffusion mechanism. Each
pore is an independently acting nanomechanism and, as such, is not bound
by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy). The only other theoretical
objection that the author has found was provided in another book by Dr.
Feynmann in which he described a nanomechanism consisting of a riverboat
type of paddle wheel mounted on a shaft inside a cylinder containing a
fluid. The paddle wheel was bombarded by the random motion of the
molecules of the fluid and caused the shaft undergo a random rotary
oscillation. To convert this motion to a useful output, an EXTERNAL
one-way ratchet was attached to the shaft. Dr. Feynmann then demonstrated
that the device would not work because the motion of the ratchet pawl
would generate enough heat so that the resultant thermal molecular motion
of the ratchet and pawl would make the pawl bounce sufficiently to render
the one way mechanism inoperative.

From the description provided, it is obvious that, while Dr. Feynmann
is undoubtedly an excellent theoretical physicist, he is not as effective
as a design engineer. Relocating the ratchet mechanism to the interior of
the fluid chamber must cool it close to the temperature of the fluid and
dampen its bounce. As a result, Dr. Feynmann's objections would vanish.
When the model is modified, Dr. Feynmann probably would be forced to
agree, that unless he could devise another objection, the concept should
represent a physically realizable device that would by-pass the Second Law
of Thermodynamics. A theoretical demonstration that the mechanism
suggested by the author cannot work requires a proof that the permeability
of all possible diffusion membranes must be the same in both directions.
Deriving such a proof may be particularly difficult because the pores of
the required membrane are allowed to extract energy from the molecules
that pass though them. CONSIDERABLE EFFORT IS JUSTIFIED IN DEVELOPING SUCH
A PROOF. IF THAT PROOF CANNOT FOUND, THE POSSIBILITY OF BUILDING A
PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE OF THE SECOND KIND IS NOT FOOLISH AND AN ALL OUT
EFFORT TO DEMONSTRATE IT IS JUSTIFIED. IF IT CAN BE BUILT, SOCIETY WOULD
HAVE AN INEXHAUSTIBLE A AND POLLUTION FREE SOURCE OF ENERGY THAT PROBABLY
COULD BE SIZED FOR THE SMALLEST HOMES AND THE LARGEST FACTORIES.

Please do not bombard the writer with the foolish objection that the
proposed mechanism can't work because it would violate the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, it is designed to do just that, and please don't raise the
objection that it can't work because the overall entropy of the Universe
can never be decreased. In this regard, the proposed mechanism is entropy
neutral.

The source material for this posting may be found in
http://einsteinhoax.com/hoax.htm (1997);
http://einsteinhoax.com/gravity.htm (1987); and
http://einsteinhoax.com/relcor.htm (1997). EVERYTHING WHICH WE ACCEPT AS
TRUE MUST BE CONSISTENT WITH EVERYTHING ELSE WE HAVE ACCEPTED AS TRUE, IT
MUST BE CONSISTENT WITH ALL OBSERVATIONS, AND IT MUST BE MATHEMATICALLY
VIABLE. PRESENT TEACHINGS DO NOT ALWAYS MEET THIS REQUIREMENT. THE WORLD
IS ENTITLED TO A HIGHER STANDARD OF WORKMANSHIP FROM THOSE IT HAS GRANTED
WORLD CLASS STATUS.

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