Dear Long Suffering Friamers I think I have now managed to come up with a macrostate statement of a phenomenon that requires entropy for its understanding. It parallels Lincoln's aphorism about fooling all of the people.
*Assuming friction free and quasistatic motion and total insulation where appropriate:* *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,**you can recover all that energy as work.* *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating it,**you can recover all that energy as heating,* *If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,** you can recover all that energy as heating.* *But if you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating, you can NOT recover all of that energy as work. * I think this is the asymmetry that requires the invention of entropy. Am I finally getting my Dux in a row? Nick -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
