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    Is The 2nd Law Always True

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    net_usr
    The document discusses challenges to the Second Law of Thermodynamics from thought experiments and recent experiments on small scales. Maxwell's demon and Jeans' miracle thought experiments seemed to allow decreasing entropy without external work input. However, they ignore factors like energy needed for observation. A recent experiment showed energy transferring from water to suspended latex beads, apparently violating the Second Law. But the Second Law always holds for large systems, and fluctuations in small systems are predicted by the Fluctuation Theorem. So the Second Law remains valid even while small systems may briefly run counter to its predictions.

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    Is The 2nd Law Always True

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    net_usr
    39 views4 pages
    The document discusses challenges to the Second Law of Thermodynamics from thought experiments and recent experiments on small scales. Maxwell's demon and Jeans' miracle thought experiments seemed to allow decreasing entropy without external work input. However, they ignore factors like energy needed for observation. A recent experiment showed energy transferring from water to suspended latex beads, apparently violating the Second Law. But the Second Law always holds for large systems, and fluctuations in small systems are predicted by the Fluctuation Theorem. So the Second Law remains valid even while small systems may briefly run counter to its predictions.

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    Is the 2nd Law Always True

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    The document discusses challenges to the Second Law of Thermodynamics from thought experiments and recent experiments on small scales. Maxwell's demon and Jeans' miracle thought experiments seemed to allow decreasing entropy without external work input. However, they ignore factors like energy needed for observation. A recent experiment showed energy transferring from water to suspended latex beads, apparently violating the Second Law. But the Second Law always holds for large systems, and fluctuations in small systems are predicted by the Fluctuation Theorem. So the Second Law remains valid even while small systems may briefly run counter to its predictions.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    39 views4 pages

    Is The 2nd Law Always True

    Uploaded by

    net_usr
    The document discusses challenges to the Second Law of Thermodynamics from thought experiments and recent experiments on small scales. Maxwell's demon and Jeans' miracle thought experiments seemed to allow decreasing entropy without external work input. However, they ignore factors like energy needed for observation. A recent experiment showed energy transferring from water to suspended latex beads, apparently violating the Second Law. But the Second Law always holds for large systems, and fluctuations in small systems are predicted by the Fluctuation Theorem. So the Second Law remains valid even while small systems may briefly run counter to its predictions.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 4

    2002

    Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics always true?


    Trn L Quang Vinh (VP2003) L Quang Nguyn

    News reported breathlessly: "One of the most important principles of physics, that disorder, or entropy, always increases, has been shown to be untrue." Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) have carried out an experiment involving lasers and microscopic latex beads that disobeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    Maxwells Demon 1
    Consider a box filled with a gas at some temperature. Maxwells demon allows only the faster molecules to move to the left side and the slower molecules to move to the right side.

    Maxwells Demon 2
    Thus eventually the box is hot on the left and cold on the right. A heat engine can then run between the two sides to generate work without any change to the surroundings!
    Heat engine

    Maxwells Demon 3
    This imaginary situation seemed to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. To explain the paradox scientists point out that to realize such a possibility the demon would still need to use energy to observe the molecules (in the form of photons for example).

    Jeansmiracle
    Put a water pot on a cooker. Thermal energy transmits from the cooker to the water pot and water will certainly be boiled. James Jeans, a British physicist and mathematician, wondered whether the reverse process is possible: thermal energy transmits from the water pot to the cooker and water will freeze!

    Jeansmiracle (cont.)
    Jeans calculated that the probability for that miracle to occur is one over ten to the power of thousand (101000)! So we can be sure that in reality the second law is hardly violated.

    Boltzmans argument
    Consider two insulated vessels communicated by a small tube. Each vessel contains one molecule. There will be a period of time during which one molecule moves from one vessel to the other.

    Boltzmans argument (cont.)


    So the entropy of the system decreases. This clearly violates the second law. However, for vessels containing a large number of molecules the probability of this process is extremely small. Again we can be sure that in reality the second law is hardly violated.

    The ANU experiment


    By measuring the motion of the latex bead that is suspended in water, and calculating the minuscule forces on it, the researchers were able to show that the bead was sometimes kicked by the water molecules in such a way that energy was transferred from the water to the bead. In effect, thermal energy was extracted from the reservoir and used to do work (helping to move the bead) in apparent violation of the second law.

    Explanation
    Entropy is just a statistical average and real systems will fluctuate about this average. These fluctuations are very small for the large number of molecules in common objects, but the fact remains that entropy will fluctuate up and down. About the only surprise in these new results is that violations can be found in a system as large as micron-sized beads in water.

    Fluctuation Theorem (FT)


    The FT determines the probability that entropy will flow in a direction opposite to that dictated by the second law of thermodynamic. The FT is more general than the second law. It can be applied to both microscopic and macroscopic systems. When applied to macroscopic systems, the FT verifies the second law of thermodynamics.

    Consequences
    The experiment suggests that nanoscale machines may have to deal with phenomena that are more bizarre than most engineers realize. Such tiny devices may even end up running backwards for brief periods due to the counterintuitive energy flow.

    Consequences (continued)
    The research may also be important to biologists because many of the cells and microbes they study comprise systems comparable in size to the beadand-water experiment.

    Conclusion
    The Second Law is always true for large-scale systems. However, for micro-scale systems there is a possibility, determined by the Fluctuation Theorem, that they would run against the direction of increased entropy.

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