Thermodynamics
You arrive at your office and unpack your breakfast. The piping-hot tea and chilly orange juice you purchased just minutes ago are now both lukewarm. Why can't the tea "steal" heat from the juice to stay hot? Why does even the most state-of-the-art car operate at a mere 30 percent efficiency? Why can't some genius create a perpetual motion machine? The answers lie in the field of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of the mechanical action or relations of heat. It turns out that "the flow of heat from the tea into the air- or from any body into a cooler one, for that matter- defines the flow of time itself. Earlier is, by definition, the time when the cup was hot, later the time when it is cool" (Von Baeyer xiv). This idea is what gave scientists the concept of real and imaginary time. Stephen Hawking says, "Imaginary time is indistinguishable from directions in space. If one can go north, one can turn around and head south; equally, if one can go forward in imaginary time, one ought to be able to turn around and go backward" (Hawking 182). Real time on the other hand follows certain "arrows," or directions in space. This is where the difference between past and future comes from. This is why we remember
the past but not the future. In his book Maxwell's Demon, Von Baeyer explains how "without this arrow of time provided by thermodynamics, we would be living in a reversible world, in which time could flow forward, backward, or not at all" (Von Baeyer xiv). In this essay I will explain further how the flow of heat, or increase in disorder of the universe, is intimately related to the forward progression of the time that we experience. If an arrow is drawn arbitrarily, and if as one follows this arrow, he finds "more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases, the arrow points towards the past" (Fraser 100). Stephen Hawking described these "arrows of time" in his book The Illustrated A Brief History of Time. He says, "there are at least three different arrows of time. First there is the thermodynamic arrow of time, the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Then there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes, the direction in which we remember the past but not the future. Finally there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting" (Hawking 184-5). Passes. New York: Random House, 1998. Hawking, Stephen. The Illustrated A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books,November 1996.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Clerk Maxwell, Law Thermodynamics, Brief History, Von Baeyer, , Hawking Imaginary, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Disperses Passes, thermodynamic arrow, von baeyer, past future, maxwell's demon, Maxwell's Demon, psychological arrow, universe expanding, heat flow, reverse process, laws thermodynamics, arrow direction, maxwell's demon warmth, illustrated brief history, remember past future, demon warmth disperses, von baeyer xiv,
Approximate Word count = 1674
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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