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Author | Topic: Discussion of the 3 thermodynamic laws | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: The 2nd law is most often misused in reference to information. The laws of thermodynamics concern themselves with the transfer of work and heat, not information. Therefore, saying that information in the genome should go towards disorder is like saying information should go down hill because of gravity. Thermodynamics says nothing about the order of subunits in a DNA polymer, nor does it say anything about the "decay" of the genome. Thermodynamic "order" is quite different than "order" used in everyday life. Go to http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html for a detailed description. And from CF001: Second Law of Thermodynamics :
The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one, or equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This doesn't prevent increasing order because
the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy which accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth. entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. [Aranda-Espinoza et al. 1999; Kestenbaum 1998] Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size [Han and Craighead 2000]. even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system. In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: They are the "rules" by which heat is transferred, and the results of heat transfer on matter. Breaking down the word "thermodynamics" into their roots you get thermo=heat and dynamo=movement. That is really what they boil down to (pardon the pun).
quote: The first law is easy (matter/energy can not be destroyed nor created). The sun loses mass as it loses energy. The conservation of mass/energy is easily calculated in terms of nuclear reactions. This means that there is a limited amount of energy, and the system as a whole (earth AND sun) is indeed losing energy in the form of energy being expelled into space that is not stored as chemical or heat energy on earth. However, the sun will collapse and supernova before all of the possible energy is used up, so it isn't like a dying battery in that sense. What happens is that energy output in the core forces matter towards the outside of the sun. Once this energy begins to fade (and a few other stages that I can't remember right now) the sun collapses into a super-dense ball and then explodes outwards. As far as the earth, at some point the earth will be within the sun as expands outward (red giant phase). After that, the only reliable heat source may be magma at the center of the earth and what high energy chemical reactants that are left. Right now, energy for life is stored in the form of energetic chemical bonds, namely glucose and ATP. These chemicals are the direct result of capturing high energy photons from the sun. Therefore, energy is created on earth from the created energy of the sun, kind of a hand-me-down energy chain. Glucose and ATP are then available to drive other reactions, especially those that are thermodynamically improbable (causing a decrease in entropy, but an overall increase in entropy since the system (sun and earth) is losing entropy). The third law is more of a statement about every system, in that absolute zero (0 Kelvin) can never be reached. That is, everything is always vibrating to some degree, therefore everything is "sloppy" from an entropy point of view. However, scientists have been able to create environments that approach absolute zero. If I remember correctly, they have at least come within 1/1000th of a degree from 0 Kelvin, and may have come closer than that. Most of their research uses forces that slow the electrons within the atom instead of directly cooling the atoms like a "freezer". I hope that wasn't too wordy. My inorganic chem and physics are a little rusty, so forgive me for any mistakes that others may point out.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
Thanks Ned for the corrections. As to super-cooling, I thought I remebered them using lasers as well. I'll have to look it up again, but chances are you are right. Thanks again.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: Yep, pretty much. To reach absolute zero you have to have a place that is below absolute zero for the heat to escape to. Since nothing can be below absolute zero it isn't possible to reach absolute zero. The laws outline why coldness can never be added to something, it is only heat and work that are able to move within a system.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: Touche, mon ami. Being a biologist, I often look over that fact. Physics professors used to tease us bio majors all of the time because we always separated light from the electromagnetic spectrum as if it had special qualities other than being detectable by the human retina. Of course, us bio geeks got our turn in anatomy, but being rational and having a strong stomach are two different things.
quote: Makes perfect sense within kinetic gas laws. When you remove the most energetic atoms, you leave the less energetic atoms (ie the atoms carrying the least amount of heat). This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 08-12-2004 12:25 PM
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: As far as I know, 2.
quote: From my own knowledge of thermodynamics, nothing contrary could happen, but things could be out of equilibrium. It is similar to gambling where you can beat the house in the short term but lose to the house in the long term. Improbable things can happen with fewer particles, but nothing contrary to the actual rules. For instance, even with 2 particles "coldness" can not move from one particle to the other, it is still heat/energy moving between the particles.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: Just a quick observation. As a child using child-like logic, you thought that if someone opened up all of the refridgerators world wide that the temperature would drop. However, the truth of the matter is that given enough open refridgerators the global temperature would actually increase in keeping with the thermodynamic laws. This example helped me to better understand laws of thermo when I first studied them.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: I really doubt it. I would suspect that the heat put off by electronic devices is dwarfed by the heat released in ongoing volcanic eruptions both on the ocean floor and above the water. Also, it takes a huge ongoing nuclear reactor (the sun) to just maintain our current temps. Probably the greatest effect on global temps is due to mechanisms that trap more heat from our main source of heat, namely the greenhouse effect. Also, the earth has experienced large swings in temps and glaciation that had nothing to do with the use of electronic devices.
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