The Second Law does not say it is impossible for heat to be transferred from a cold body to a hot body. The second law does not say that "disorder" must increase on the earth or anywhere else. Life is not a counter-example to the second law; life is an example of the second law in action.
One has to be very careful about applying statistical results to a single molecule or a few molecules and remembering that increasing entropy applies to irreversible changes, not reversible ones. The second law says nothing about disorder. The second law does not prevent evaporative coolers from operating.
The second law does not contradict radiative transfer theory or global warming. The second law does not contradict conservation of energy. In applying the second law to cosmology, one should tread cautiously.
Subsequent posts in this series elucidate what the second actually does say and how it is misinterpreted. The next post in this series is entitled What the Second Law Does Say.
Contents
- Introduction
- What the Second Law Does Not Say
- What the Second Law Does Say
- Entropy is Not a Measure of Disorder
- Reversible Processes
- The Carnot Cycle
- The Definition of Entropy
- Perpetual Motion
- The Hydrogen Economy
- Heat Can Be Transferred From a Cold Body to a Hot Body: The Air Conditioner
- The Second Law and Swamp Coolers
- Entropy and Statistical Thermodynamics
- Fluctuations
- Partition Functions
- Entropy and Information Theory
- The Second Law and Creationism
- Entropy as Religious, Spiritual, or Self-Help Metaphor
- Free Energy
- Spontaneous Change and Equilibrium
- The Second Law, Radiative Transfer, and Global Warming
- The Second Law, Microscopic Reversibility, and Small Systems
- The Arrow of Time
- The Heat Death of the Universe
- Gravity and Entropy
- The Second Law and Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence
- Conclusion
4 comments:
"The second law does contradict radiative transfer theory or global warming." Are you missing "not"?
Indeed.
The second law has a great deal to day about disorder. In fact the entire field of quantum mechanics is based on this premise. Visit the eoht wiki to learn more.
I disagree with that comment. Entropy is not disorder. QM is really not based on such a premise. It is more based on Dirac's quantum condition. I am not sure if you are trolling or are serious. Please see:
http://how-it-looks.blogspot.com/2010/10/entropy-is-not-measure-of-disorder.html
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