The Second Law of Thermodynamics

I looked briefly at the material. I'm no chemist, so I didn't follow a lot of the arguments. However, let me sort of put forward what I think and see if that jibes.

Few thermodynamicists today think of entropy as being disorder alone, and none think of it in human terms. A much better way to look at entropy is in terms of multiplicities.

I can't see any way the second law contradicts the first law. The first law is an awful statement in practice, since you can seldom keep track of all the work, but the idea is OK.

And, how does this figure into Newton's second law? I can do thermo without ever referring to Newton.

I look forward to a good discussion here.

The readers of this thread will perhaps then understand that I, very busy with several interesting and worthwhile projects, don't want to spend time with this sort of thing.

I doubt that this will be the case. I think instead that readers will see that you simply want to take your pot shot at Nick Name -- who is well-known here as a technically astute guy -- and then run. If you "don't want to spend time with this sort of thing" then why did you start the thread?

I, for one, do not condone cyber bullying, and few here do. Your comment re Nick Name ("Anyone who needs to "research with the help of wikipedia" obviously isn't qualified to discuss something as abstruse as the Second Law of Thermodynamics - even as a matter of history.") is simply bullying. I believe other readers will quickly see that. I can assure you that Nick Name is well-acquainted with thermodynamics.

You wrote to Nick name,

that folks like you require a good deal of preparatory course work before entering a discussion like this one

He is well-prepared, and far from the ill-informed fledgling you would like others to believe he is. And what "discussion" did you have in mind?? The first three posts in this thread were all polite and technically accurate, and then in the fourth post you are on the attack, and writing "Geez, I really do wish I hadn't brought this up..."

I really don't think CR4 is the right place for your sociology experiments. I suspect that admin will see bullying as bullying, not as valid or useful experimentation.

I've just posted another blurb of mine on the General Discussion page here, and thought you'd like to know. It's a rainy day here, I can't work with my VAWT project - get up on the roof, that is - and something shook my tree overnight.

Hopefully, someone will give me some ideas and answers.

Anyway, have a good day!

This website might in that regard prove interesting, even for those so sententiously certain about their supposed knowledge of Newton's Second Law: http://entropysite.oxy.edu/

This site makes no mention of Newton's Second law. While I am perhaps not sententiously certain about my supposed knowledge of Newton's Second Law (which many of us refer to in shorthand as F=MA) I would put myself in the class of people who are damn certain that the formulation of the law is correct for all ordinary, everyday, ("Newtonian" physics) phenomena. In my experience at least, it seems to work every single time.

If you want to elaborate on your contention that the first law of thermodynamics contradicts the second, (a hunch that I do not share) then perhaps a simple statement by you regarding precisely why you feel that way would give us some hint regarding the reason that this thread exists. The linked article does not make that case. Nor does it make any mention of Newton's Second law, or present any rational for linking the two. Throwing Newton's Second in confuses the issue, and if you expect people to "get" what you are trying to communicate, you'll have to provide at least a few clues, and better yet, try to present your ideas clearly and simply.

Blink,

You are quite right (as often the case). You could in principle begin with Newton's second law applied to each gas molecule to come up with some collection of mv_rms² terms, but the rms sub would clue most folks they were in for a long count (Say, Harry, I've added up 617 of these buggers. How many did you say there was in Avogadro's number? ). Once you drink the Kool-Aid and shift to a state ensemble, QM shouldn't even be considered.

The second law of thermo is often (very, very often ) mistaken as describing order or disorder, and that's just not true, except as part of a bigger description. For example, imagine we have a white hot piece of iron that we put in a cold quench bath. Disorder advocates would say we now had greater disorder because we had a lot of stuff at the same temperature. Yet, the iron actually gained order and had a decrease in entropy. The system (now counting the water) had an increase. So, I'm arguing that we can't pick and choose.

So, I'm arguing that we can't pick and choose.

Yes, I agree with this whole paragraph. (And love the wording of the first paragraph too: drink the Kool-Aid.)

Regarding the first paragraph, I am cautious about my use of the words "in theory" or "in principle." (Actually, I think I am cautious... in fact, most of what I write on CR4 is quickly thrown together, and would benefit from a good edit -- I suspect that at least half the words could be eliminated, and the communication would improve.) Often, when these words are used, it means that according to one theory (but not according to several others) some condition can be met. So "in principle" it would be possible to apply F=MA to particle accelerations, and then based upon those accelerations assess overall velocities, and eventually mass entropy... but there are "other principles" at work.

On the grossly macro level, we can say with high certainty the a ball will fall downward, despite sophomoric arguments that there is a possibility that next time it will fall upward. I think of aerodynamics as being about half way to the micro level, and even there, the certainty starts to disappear: CFD has a very hard time predicting the actual airflow associated with turbulence, for example. But predicting the movement of a particular molecule? The stuff of dreams.

(None of which I say, incidentally, as a criticism of your post, but rather to reinforce any readers' awareness that substitution Newton's second for Carnot's second is anything but ordinary, sound science. There will, no doubt, be some scammer who will cite Doctor_imaginary WIS as an authority. Having recently been told about a pretty smart, capable guy who lost $1,000,000 to an HHO investment scam, I do not want to offer any support at all to such types, while allowing that WIS is probably not a scammer -- he just appears to lack a scientific bent, or simply is here, as he has implied several times, to stir up trouble -- to show how contentious debate can get between scientists and pseudoscientists.)

This thread originated because WIS incorrectly stated (in the "enough is enough" thread) that Newton's Second law was frequently referenced in debunking HHO devices. There are all sorts of unscientific things said re HHO, but essentially no debunkers (aside from those who are unfamiliar with the subject matter and are simply parroting something they thought they heard somewhere) cite Newton's second. (Imagine the phenomenal complexity of attempting the calculations!). The expert witnesses for the FTC, for example, in putting Dennis Lee out of the HHO business, did not cite Newton's second, but did cite the laws of thermodynamics. I have asked WIS to provide an instance in which Newton's second is cited, but he has not done so. A web search of "Newton's + second + HHO" yields the predictable threads like this one, in which conspiracy theorists such as "quarktoo" promote their agenda with gobbledygook. WIS has had many days to provide a link to any "debunking" in which Newton's Second is referenced as a key reason for the inability of HHO units to work as advertised and claimed. He has failed to do so.

His hope, I presume, was that by trying to link Newton's second to Carnot's second, his credibility would improve. That did not work. In my opinion, his credibility would improve dramatically if he 1. first admitted his mistake, and 2. provided a simple calorimeter experiment to show that his own special HHO unit produces more energy in HHO than it consumes in electricity, and 3. provided some plausible rationale to his claim that 65 ml of HHO per minute (which sets a new record here at CR4 for tininess of injected amount -- about 1/10 of that produced by the Lee device) should have any effect at all, given that the Lee device has no effect at all (and given NASA tests and others that show that hydrogen injection has an effect only in orders of magnitude larger amounts -- and even then that the effects are as science would predict.) A rational person would have to say: "Wait... if 65 ml of HHO per minute could have a measurable effect on engine combustion, then shouldn't my engine suffocate if I breath out near it? I breath out orders of magnitude more CO2."

The FTC's expert witnesses were a superbly qualified physicist and a combustion engineer (John Heywood, who has written the combustion texts used in many colleges) who is among the most cited in the world. Heywood's tests showed that the effect of the Lee HHO unit (which is actually of somewhat better construction than many) has exactly the effect that anyone with a scientific bent would expect: none. None at all.

So this thread is intended as a distraction, just as "quarktoo's" babble in the linked thread is intended. The techniques employed are nearly identical: "I'm sorry but you are simply too poorly informed in the subject matter to understand" why my [perpetual motion machine, HHO unit, run you car on water concept, Hummingbird generator, Searl effect generator, magnet motor] works.

Although I view the discussion itself as pointless (although the cited articles are actually pretty good), your comments, as always, have improved it, and I'd like other readers to be aware that you are not in any way shape or form the witless drone WIS tries to make you seem in the following quotes:

Please to not think me rude - again I speak with all due respect - if I don't want to discuss anything as complex as Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics, quantum physics and cosmology (to which the debate must inevitably turn), or even Hydrogen bonding in water and its implications for energy science, with persons academically unprepared.

More, and with all due respect, your comment "there is no relationship between Newton's second law and thermo" will serve to demonstrate yet another example of my reasons. Anyone who makes such a statement confesses in so doing understanding of the matter far too rudimentary for any purpose of the prospective discussion.

Come now: "Please don't think me rude." This is patently and obviously rude. This is bullying, pure and simple. It is not, as WIS claims, an experiment in sociology. The "scrofulous" (his word) condition of American discourse seems to me, at least, to be of his own creation.

Suffice it to say that there is no meaningful evidence that Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics exists in anything other than WIS's imagination, and I hope it is obvious to anyone reading this that both you and Nickname are smart, capable guys who have little trouble in understanding the physical laws that actually do exist.

Cyber bullies need to be rebutted and discouraged.

Darn... should have set the stirrups lower... almost fell off, getting down.