🚀 go-pugleaf

On Apr 12, 1:17 pm, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://focus.aps.org/story/v23/st10
> "In collisions between two deformable or sticky objects, some or all
> of the initial energy is usually lost to heat. But computer
> simulations of nanocluster collisions, as described in the March
> Physical Review E, show that thermal fluctuations in the tiny
> projectiles can cause them to rebound with more kinetic energy than
> they started with. This energy boost would seem to violate the second
> law of thermodynamics, which bans heat from being turned directly into
> energy of motion. (...) The fraction of these anomalous rebounds
> increased with the cluster temperature. "When the temperature
> increases, more and more vibrating modes are excited," Kuninaka says.
> These vibrations can sometimes give an extra kick to the collision,
> like a gymnast pushing off the pummel horse to get a greater lift. The
> transfer of energy from random internal motion of the atoms to the
> movement of the whole cluster creates a decrease in entropy and
> therefore an apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
> But that's OK at small scales."
>
> That's OK at large scales as well, as demonstrated by macroscopic
> contractile polymers:
>
> http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp972167t
> J. Phys. Chem. B, 1997, 101 (51), pp 11007–11028
> Dan W. Urry, "Physical Chemistry of Biological Free Energy
> Transduction As Demonstrated by Elastic Protein-Based Polymers"
>
> As far as I know, the only paper explaining (or trying to explain) how
> biased thermal motion can phenomenologically be expressed as violation
> of the second law of thermodynamics is this one:
>
> http://www.wbabin.net/valev/valev2.htm

Curiously, scientists often bump into biased thermal motion (more
precisely, into conversion of random thermal energy into work) and
even reach the correct conclusion:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=second-law-of-thermodynam
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "Second Law of Thermodynamics Violated....Genmiao
M. Wang of the Australian National University and colleagues
discovered the anomaly when they dragged a micron-sized bead through a
container of water using optical tweezers. The team found that, on
occasion, the water molecules interacted with the bead in such a way
that energy was transferred from the liquid to the bead. These
additional kicks used the random thermal motion of the water to do the
work of moving the bead, in effect yielding something for nothing."

Still no new theory can be built: thermodynamics is dead but still
exists in the form of Augean stables and no good stuff can be
discovered amidst the crap.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com