Entropy in Layman's Terms

The ATP (the main energy molecule in your cells) you use to stand up is forever gone. Your body must use ingested food to replace it, and the food will contain less energy than it did to start with. The mere act of sitting down does not replace that ATP. There is no machine or system you could use during the act of sitting down to replace all of the energy used in standing up (i.e. no perpetual energy machine). For the most part. For example, an internal combustion engine is fairly ineffecient. It pumps out hot air that is not used and it creates a lot of sound waves that are not used.Refrigerators are another good example. They actually produce more heat than they do "cold". A refridgerator works by insulating the cold area from the heat it produces. However, overall there is an increase in heat due to the activity of the refrigerator. Hypothetically, if you opened all of the refrigerators in the world for a month it would actually heat the atmosphere, not cool it.

If that were the case then in the analogy you would leave part of yourself in the spill and take part of the spill back to your chair. That is what happens in thermodynamics, energy is exchanged so that it spreads evenly through the system.IOW, it's not a very good analogy to begin with. With regards to the system (the engine), it isn't useable. It is also worth noting that some of the earliest work in thermodynamics was done on steam engines and based on the Carnot Cycle principle. A google search should find all the info you need if you want to read up on it. Another way to put it is that there is no engine that is 100% effecient. All engines waste energy somewhere within the system. That is why a perpetual motion device is thermodynamically impossible. Yep, that's correct. Also, if the waterwheel were connected through an axle to another waterwheel going in the opposite direction you would not be able to move the same amount of water up the same elevation. You could move smaller amounts of water though.

Getting the water back to the top would require you to pump energy into the system. You would wind up putting more energy into the system than you get out. In real life, the sun provides the energy input for the waterwheel system by evaporating water and moving it to higher elevations.

We also assume that Santa Claus does not radomly thaw ice cubes either.

Perhaps this analogy will help. Try to balance a pencil on the tip. It doesn't like that position does it? It's unstable. The eraser side of the pencil has potential energy (gravity) which makes it unstable. When the pencil falls over that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and the pencil winds up in a stable position (on its side). That is how the waterwheel system works. Water at a higher elevation is unstable. It has potential energy. It is a real example of potential energy being converted to kinetic energy. This results in less total energy (potential energy + kinetic energy + work done) at the end than at the beginning. The loss of useable energy is entropy.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

If the water were in a stable position then it wouldn't flow downhill through the wheel. It does flow downhill and through the wheel. In order to have a discussion with anyone but yourself you may need to change the way you view things a bit and get out of your comfort zone. Both deal with kinetic energy. Hold on to your hat for just a second. Temperature is the average kinetic energy of an group of molecules, be it in a solid, liquid, or gas. The easiest to visualize is a gas. As you probably know from high school physics and from your own experience, when you increase the temperature of a gas you increase it's pressure. This is because as you add energy to a gas you make the gas molecules go faster and faster making them hit the sides of a container harder and harder. Temperature is the movement of molecules. Heat is transferred by one molecule banging into the next. In this process one molecule loses velocity while the other gains velocity. This is why temperature reaches an equilibrium.It is the same as water banging against the water wheel.

Can you name one instance where a human has been able to violate the 2LoT? Humans, like all other natural processes, are subject to the 2LoT. All processes that humans are involved in result in less work availabe at the end than at the beginning. All processes that humans are involved we observe that heat disperses through the system towards equilibrium. The only way we can make this go into reverse is to pump energy into the system in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics.So what are you on about? Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

In order to know when creationists are misusing the term.

You can also find examples of the reverse reaction in biology, ATP to excited photons: The reaction:
Luciferase + Luciferin + ATP + O2 -------------------> oxyluciferin + AMP + emitted photonThis reaction is actually used quite extensively in the lab.