Entropy

i was just sticking up for the laws of thermodynamics.

I've got one to...it may be a clone, reincarnation, etc. She is quite capricious and impudent, from the years of indecision.

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Oh my.
I wonder if they are able to consciously manipulate the quanta layers.

what are 2.6 and 2.4 dimensions?

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yeah, so then what are all the other shapes supposed to be?

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so something has to be composed of right angles to be considered truly two or three dimensional?

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not if the lines don't match u won't. ok, now explain that stuff about shrodinger.

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i'm gonna sound like an idiot. but since i do anyway- how can it be alive AND dead?

In a box: (all of this, you cannot see) there is a cat, a vial of poison gas, a radiation detection device(attached to the gas), and a radioactive atom. Since all things are atoms, and all atoms move around. You never know when the atom reaches the device and releases the gas and the gas reaches the cat, therefore it is both dead and alive.

edited:because of the f*cking smilies.

poor cat. I'm intrigued. Tell me about the sea monkeys. A few years ago someone gave me some for Christmas, they were dead in like a week... I think someone knocked them over on the coffee table. Of course, I couldn't be bothered keeping them alive anyway. faye-sea monkey slaughteress.

So then the cat is not technically dead and alive, No one knows weather it is dead or alive, so it is assumed to be both?

I don't think it's assumed to be both, but it could be either and there's no way to tell.

I get it.:D , weird theory.

I think it's interesting. But I try to keep a lid on any interest I have in Science... Anyway, to the sea monkeys....

Sea monkey?

Abdo said something about Shrodinger's Sea Monkeys. I'm guessing they applied a similar idea to that of Sea Monkeys. Not that you can ever see those things anyway.

Really? The cat idea could be applied to any animal, or is this an entirely different theory?

I don't actually know, but since I have some spare time now I read up a little on this (emphasis on little-as in hardly at all. not enough to have an actual understanding.) But you could probably stick any animal in a box with a vial of cyanide and the experiment would still hold. I think Schrodinger's experiment is supposed to illustrate superposition-as long as we don't look to check in on the cat, it can be in all possible states. Funny thing about sea monkeys is if you ever actually look at the stupid little things it's pretty hard to tell what state they're in anyway.

If anyone cares, there's a poem on this at:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html

I found it vaguely amusing, anyway.

Sea Monkeys was a joke.

That was a great poem.:D

The sea monkeys were just a joke?

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LOL. *hits head against computer screen* I get it now. I admit I know nothing about quantum physics. Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc. It was interesting to find out about though. A little reminder of my ignorance.

Oh, but I would like to run some cruel experiments on Sea Monkeys. Moihahaha. Kill the buggers. Or leave them alive AND dead. :)

You won't be able to catch them. They move from one reality to the next. So while they may be dead in this reality. They may not be dead in the others.

But if they're dead in this reality and alive in others haven't I succeeded in my attempts to leave them alive and dead?

I think so.

the demon. In a maxwell's demon. Wouldn't he increase the entropy of the system? [I'm not gonna let this thing go. People will defy the laws of thermodynamics over my dead body]

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I just don't think it could work. I mean, the thing you described earlier-the box with the partition, well the chances of that ever happening are infinitesmal, though I admit chances exist. But when/if it eventually happened, it would only be for the slightest fraction of a millisecond, and in that time the partition would have to be dropped. that's got to be one fast moving partition to work. Consequently, when it closes the box, trapping the particles, and comes to a stop, it's gonna release a lot of heat [large change in velocity, small amount of time]. wouldn't this heat increase the entropy of the system? [but like I said earlier, I know very little about this]. Also, as for Maxwell's demon itself, the idea doesn't quite work, in my mind. meh. I'm tired. I'll go into it later.

As far as the infinitesmal chance of all the particles moving to 1 half of the box, that's why we have theory. Theories don't always work in reality. (and sometimes reality doesn't seem to fit into theories) For instance a sphere of arbitrary radius COULD be disassembled into infinitesmal parts and reassembled, as a continuous mass, into a sphere of radius 2. This mathematical theory falls apart when we take into consideration a little thing known as the atom (no pun intended).

As far as sliding the partition in, if you shape your box so it is narrow in height (for less velocity when inserting), and use some good lubricants, then heat from friction could be minimised. Although technology these days allows for superconductors, allowing for lossless transmission of electrons, so why not say it is theoretically possible to transmit larger particles, such as a partition? Then heat is eliminated altogether.

Sorry for my verbosity, verging on verbocidal-ness.

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ok, what I wrote last time doesn't even make sense and I was hoping to get here and edit it before anyone read it, but since you already have, I'll leave it be and say that in my tired state when I wrote system what I meant was surroundings. Listen: this partition thing. Firstly, the chances of the molecules even filling one side are ridiculously small [as I already said] secondly, even if they only filled one side, it would be for the tiniest fraction of a second. A few milliseconds-MAYBE. Ok, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the average speeds of molecules in a gas,* which are generally assumed to be around the speed of sound in air (but are often faster). I'm getting to my point. So, for this partition to trap these molecules, it's got to go from 0m/s to over the speed of sound and back to stationary in the space of less than a second. [unless you can predict the movement of gas molecules, which you can't] Firstly, you probably can't do this. Secondly, that sort of acceleration could never be achieved by gravity. thirdly, even if you could do this, it would require a relatively large amount of energy. Whatever machine moves the partition, it's bound to give off large amounts of heat to the surroundings. this'll increase the entropy of the surroundings, but also the fact it needs so much energy means that the whole box thing could never solve the problem of our energy needs.




*If you're not, you can calculate it with v=square root of (3RT/M), R=8.314, T=kelvins, M=molecular mass. I'm not putting calculations up here. Yes, it is an average.Some will be going slower, but then again, some will be travelling much faster.


ok, now as for the demon, I wanted to argue it couldn't work even in theory. By saying it doesn't exist and wastes no energy, abdo's inadvertantly done that for me. I hope someone understands what I mean in my ramble.

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