2nd Law not set in stone?

Some interesting developments... http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/598-1.htmlAbstract Link[Shortened too long link. --Admin]Title of paper from the second link: [b]Experimental Demonstration of Violations of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics for Small Systems and Short Time Scales[b]G. M. Wang,1 E. M. Sevick,1 Emil Mittag,1 Debra J. Searles,2 and Denis J. Evans1
1Research School of Chemistry, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
2School of Science, Griffith University, Brisbane QLD 4111, Australia

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[This message has been edited by Admin, 07-19-2002]

Interesting.It makes one wonder to what extent statistical averages and openess/closeness comes into it all. It's no suprise that non-random arrangements of material can accumulate order. Cells and crystals do it every day. Interesting nevertheless. Without getting completely into it the find suggests something beyond what we see with crystallization.EDIT: Reading the abstract of the paper itself demonstrates that the result is theoretically expected due to statistical fluctuaitons it seems (a little as I anticipated at the start of this post).

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-19-2002]

The paper by Wang et al is an experimental verification of fluctuation theory for nano scale systems. Very small engines that perform work comparable in magnitude to the thermal energy can absorb heat from the environment and run backwards consuming entropy rather than producing it. This violates the second law of thermodynamics in macro sized systems and is not possible except with very tiny machines. One should remember that Boltzman-Gibbs statistical mechanics require large ensembles of particles to be valid and the connection between statistical mechanics and particle dynamics at small scales with a finite number of particles is very difficult to deal with.A review of fluctuation theory and its derivation can be found at
http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/9901/9901258.pdfThe final result is straightforward and the exponential dependence on the magnitude of the entropy fluctuation ensures that the phenomenon won’t occur macroscopically. The full derivation uses some fairly heavy math, at least for me, and I am still struggling to understand it fully.I think that this work is further illustration of the fact that using disorder in macroscopic objects, such as messy desks, to illustrate the second law of thermodynamics in not correct. The scaling from large to very small works no better in thermodynamics than it does in mechanics.Randy

I am not sure that this is not a theoretical only difficulty (although two glances at enough words seems to indicate an aposteriori reality is being discussed) as I do not yet have the prior thought on the topic that I have previously wrote as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny because Brownian Motion is not mutually reciprocally independent of gravity fall." So not only would the size matter but also the material (biological, nano, etc). When I read Maxwell I noticed that he, in his time, had an absolute difference between the first and second laws. I doubt this is still true but have no idea so would appreciate being filled in by some physical knowledge.

The interesting thing is that in biology one can do the equational work without only relating to the thermal comparison for this is where the form of the species will have any naturalistic significance on the empirical geometry that is an environment for physico-chemistry but if one tends to think that the equations of the macroscopic material can only be approached from formulas starting out of QM as for instance was Pauling's approach one could miss that there may be more to the "internal" field then physics field theory gave to birth in QM for formal work at least in analogy by applied math is possible which if more than incidental spells even conservatively matter that is not the same as in chemistry let alone physics otherwise one tends to lump all this as dissipative which it could be as well but though there is an emprical approach and a philsophy of science to front this kind of work that is not all that is possible scientifically. We need some other than NSF to be doing the grants.