advanced thermodynamics

complience — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:52:32 -0800

explain further The Second Law of Thermodynamics I asked a few months ago for the good members of Metafilter to explain to me the 2nd Law and I got a great response.

But the more I learn about the second law the more confused I seem to became.

I understand the 2nd law to be this: expression of the universal law of increasing entropy,

or to put it more simply

"energy is moving about"

basicly meaning:

"nothing is free" or more correctly "profit can never be made"

is there anthing wrong with what I understand?

Can someone please explain the The Second Law of Thermodynamics to me, with examples?

complience — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:25:08 -0800

Can someone please explain the The Second Law of Thermodynamics to me, with examples? I'm reading The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. Trying to understand Information Theory and entropy. For this I need to understand the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.. which i understand to be:

"Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out."

And an example of this is a rock will always fall if you let go of it a great height Or high pressure will always leak into a low pressure.

But this where I get confused.. that is surely Newtons theory of Cause and Effect in action not the second law.

So my question is really.. what is the difference between the second law of thermodynamics and newtons law of cause and effect?

Great Sites btw:-
www.secondlaw.com
www.2ndlaw.com

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advanced thermodynamics

Can someone please explain the The Second Law of Thermodynamics to me, with examples?