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Thermodynamics
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Thermodynamics is the study of the relationships between heat, work, and energy. Though rooted in physics, it has a clear application to chemistry, biology, and other sciences: in a sense, physical life itself can be described as a continual thermodynamic cycle of transformations between heat and energy. But these transformations are never perfectly efficient, as the second law of thermodynamics shows. Nor is it possible to get "something for nothing," as the first law of thermodynamics demonstrates: the work output of a system can never be greater than the net energy input. These laws disappointed hopeful industrialists of the early nineteenth century, many of whom believed it might be possible to create a perpetual motion machine. Yet the laws of thermodynamics did make possible such highly useful creations as the internal combustion engine and the refrigerator.
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Thermodynamics is the study of the connection between heat and work and the conversion of one into the other. This study is important because many machines and modern devices change heat into work (such as an automobile engine) or turn work into heat (or cooling, as in a refrigerator). There are two laws of thermodynamics that explain the connection between work and heat. But first it must be shown how mechanical energy can be equivalent to heat energy.
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is ... commonly referred to as entropy. A watchspring-driven watch will run until the potential energy in the spring is converted, and not again until energy is reapplied to the spring to rewind it. A car that has run out of gas will not run again until you walk 10 miles to a gas station and refuel the car. Once the potential energy locked in carbohydrates is converted into kinetic energy (energy in use or motion), the organism will get no more until energy is input again. In the process of energy transfer, some energy will dissipate as heat. Entropy is a measure of disorder: cells are NOT disordered and so have low entropy.
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In Evolution, Thermodynamics and Information, Jeffrey S. Wicken ... adopts the terms "thermal" and "configurational." But here they both pertain only to the non-energetic "information content" of a thermodynamic state, and "energetic" information is also necessary for the complete description of a system. Shannon entropy is different from all of these, and not a useful concept to Wicken. Nevertheless, he says that evolution and the origin of life are not separate problems and, "The most parsimonious explanation is to assume that life always existed" (19.5)!
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. How so? Usable energy is inevitably used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy. Thus, usable energy is irretrievably lost in the form of unusable energy.
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics can be restated to talk about entropy, which is a quantitative measurement of the disorder in a system. The change in heat divided by the absolute temperature is the entropy change of the process. Defined this way, the Second Law can be restated as:
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Thermodynamics