Quotes About Thermodynamics

Another way to describe the Second Law is in terms of entropy, the degree of disorder and randomness in a system. Any spontaneous process tends to increase the entropy of a system.

The law of thermodynamics, you know, the idea that nothing is lost, that a loss in one area equals a gain in the other, was actually not invented by scientists but by the people who write redemptive fiction. [...] Actually, in real life, we lose things all the time and they're gone. Lost, period.

On the Newton Scale, the temperature of boiling water is thirty-three degrees.

The quantity that physicists call the specific heat of a substance is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 g of this substance by 1 degree Celsius.

Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer.

But heat can also be produced by the friction of liquids, in which there could be no question of changes in structure, or of the liberation of latent heat.

Entropy is the loyal servant of the second law of thermodynamics. So, if we think of entropy as a character in our story, we should imagine it as dissolute, lurking, careless of others' pain and suffering, not interested in looking you in the eye. Entropy is also very, very dangerous, and in the end it will get us all.

We think of GDP as a measure of the wealth that a country generates each year. But from a thermodynamic point of view, it is more a measure of the temporary energy value embedded in the goods or services produced at the expense of the diminution of the available energy reserves and an accumulation of entropic waste. Since

Glansdorff, P., & Prigogine, I. (1971). Thermodynamic theory of structure, stability and fluctuations. London: Wiley.

But if today's low-income countries are to move from poverty to an incipient affluence... then none of those factors could make a difference without the rising consumption of fuels and electricity: a decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption during early stages of modern economic development would defy the laws of thermodynamics." (p. 350, italics added)

Maxwell was a brilliant scientist who counted among his many interests optics and color, the mathematics of ovals, thermodynamics, the rings of Saturn, measuring latitude with a bowl of treacle, and the question of how cats land upright while conserving angular momentum when dropped upside down.

Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." "That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. "No," he said. "That's faith.

Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed. That's the first law of thermodynamics, I said, wiping my nose. No, he said. That's faith.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and so the total amount of energy which is present before and after any physical transaction will not be changed. This principle is called 'the conservation of energy'.

However, Science People like to believe in laws, even when such laws can be circumvented by their own Science. They become most displeased if you suggest it would be more accurate to speak of the Generally Good Idea Of Gravity or the Three Useful Guidelines Of Thermodynamics.

Prigogine's principle

By definition, heaven must be independent of the space-time domain because within its boundaries the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the law of universal decay, does not function. The nature of heaven is entirely different from that of an alien beam-ship or any extraterrestrial planet subject to the laws of death and decay.

The universe tended towards chaos and entropy. That was basic thermodynamics. Maybe it was basic existence too.

O Universo tinha tendência a mergulhar no caos e na entropia. Era um princípio de termodinâmica simples. Talvez também fosse o princípio de uma existência básica.

Evolution] is reminiscent of the way that the temperatures of a hot object and a cold object placed in contact with each another approach thermal equilibrium, in conformity with the second law of thermodynamics.

I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.

Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism's insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To everything there is a season"), change is part of life