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Description:
What is the second law of thermodynamics? That's the one about a Thermos being the most dynamic of all drinking containers, right? Uh, wrong. Basically, it has to do with entropy, chaos, and heat, oh my.
Transcript
- 00:01
No the second law of thermodynamics Why making a mis
- 00:06
is just part of physics into chaos Cleaning doesn't violate
- 00:14
the laws of physics But your parents The key to
- 00:21
a happy life is to make sure everything is in
- 00:24
its place But you spend most of your waking life
Full Transcript
- 00:27
making sure things are organized and properly stored The rest
- 00:31
of your life will be so much happier and sure
- 00:33
you could take this advice too far Theoretically But we
- 00:36
have to do everything we can to fight disorder because
- 00:38
the universe is fighting back against us Stupid messy universe
- 00:42
What does a clean bedroom have to be with physics
- 00:44
to answer that question let's talk about thermodynamics The first
- 00:48
law of thermodynamics says that energy can't be destroyed or
- 00:51
created All the energy in the universe already exists It's
- 00:54
not going anywhere And no new energy is going toe
- 00:58
walk through the front door The second law of thermodynamics
- 01:00
actually has a few different definitions or different ways We
- 01:03
can understand it Have you ever dropped a few ice
- 01:06
cubes in a glass of soda and then forgot it
- 01:08
on the counter I haven't But let's assume you have
- 01:11
when you come back It's a gross water down disaster
- 01:13
What happened Heat transfer happened That's what heat moves from
- 01:16
the warmer soda into the colder ice Cubes making them
- 01:19
melt so why didn't it work the other way around
- 01:22
Why didn't the heat go from the ice cubes of
- 01:24
the soda Sure the ice cubes are super cold but
- 01:27
they still have internal energy but it would be pretty
- 01:29
freaky if you put ice and soda and the ice
- 01:32
somehow got colder and yeah turns out that never happens
- 01:35
It's actually impossible it would break the second law of
- 01:38
thermodynamics One way to explain the second law is to
- 01:41
say that he'd always flows from a higher temperature system
- 01:44
to a lower temperature system and it never ever goes
- 01:47
the other way around That just makes sense it's one
- 01:50
of those things that's so obvious you wonder why they
- 01:52
even had to write it down I'm not judging but
- 01:54
it turned out that the second law is a little
- 01:56
more complicated than that because the second law of thermodynamics
- 01:59
is really about entropy which is a fancy science word
- 02:02
for disorder or chaos The best definition of the second
- 02:06
law of thermodynamics is as follows in all natural processes
- 02:10
The total entropy of a system and its surrounding environment
- 02:13
either stays the same or increases entropy Never decreases To
- 02:18
put that a normal person speak things always become more
- 02:21
disorderly if we consider both the system and the environment
- 02:24
around them Let's say it's a wonderful day for fun
- 02:27
and we get to spend eight hours organizing the house
- 02:31
It doesn't get any better than that does it Just
- 02:33
a full day of organizing and tiding by the time
- 02:36
you're done it's almost as if you can't detect any
- 02:39
sign of human life at all It's perfect it's Wonderful
- 02:42
it's Sorry What was i saying Oh right entropy So
- 02:46
we just showed that there can be less disorder in
- 02:48
the universe At least here in our little pocket of
- 02:51
it Right Sorry But now first of all any time
- 02:53
you have that much fun you're going to work up
- 02:55
a sweat That means heat came off of you and
- 02:58
went into the air And when you heat molecules up
- 03:00
they move around and vibrate and just get all worked
- 03:02
up which means they get more chaotic and as you
- 03:06
scurry around putting things away had also disturbs molecules in
- 03:09
the air opening and closing dresser drawers putting things on
- 03:12
hangers The joyful act of throwing junk Away all of
- 03:14
that involves friction which means heat which means chaos There
- 03:18
is no escaping it it's enough to drive you crazy
- 03:21
but we don't get crazy because crazy is chaos and
- 03:23
chaos is the enemy keep calm and clean on another
- 03:26
example of this happens when we have a bouncy ball
- 03:28
We've all played with one of these super balls that
- 03:31
bounce like crazy right If you drop a super ball
- 03:33
without adding any extra energy to it it'll bounce back
- 03:36
up pretty high but it won't bounce all the way
- 03:39
back up to where it started Part of that is
- 03:41
due to gravity Part of that is also due to
- 03:43
entropy right before the ball hits the ground It's got
- 03:46
a lot of kinetic energy as it hit the ball
- 03:49
do forms a little creating elastic potential energy Then it
- 03:53
snaps back into its original shape which is why it
- 03:56
bounces back up into the air The ground also deformed
- 03:59
a little bit too And all of this d formation
- 04:01
makes the molecules all jumpy So some of the kinetic
- 04:04
energy of the ball is transferred into internal energy of
- 04:07
the ball and the ground internal energy Means ah higher
- 04:11
temperature And in fact if you had some thermometer keeping
- 04:14
track of the super ball you'd see it tick up
- 04:16
just a little bit like one or two tenths of
- 04:18
a degree Maybe the ground's temperature would go up a
- 04:21
teeny bit too Since some of the kinetic energy is
- 04:23
converted into internal energy the ball loses some goof on
- 04:27
its bounce and you guessed it more chaos is created
- 04:30
There's just no way around it Okay Circling back How
- 04:33
is entropy related to our first explanation of this thermodynamics
- 04:37
law Remember we said that heat flows from the warmer
- 04:40
system to the cooler system Think of it like this
- 04:43
which is more orderly A block of ice or a
- 04:45
bowl of water It's the ice without a question Molecules
- 04:49
and a solid are tightly aligned there's no molecular slipping
- 04:52
and sliding like you havin a liquid and in general
- 04:55
a colder system has less chaos than a warmer one
- 04:58
The molecules are moving more slowly they're vibrating less their
- 05:01
little molecular shoes air neatly stacked up Ah hot system
- 05:05
means chaos galore Molecules banging into each other electrons flying
- 05:09
around willy nilly shoes never being put Away oh it
- 05:12
makes me it's just thinking about it Entropy will always
- 05:15
increase or stay the same If heat float out of
- 05:18
a cooler system and into a warmer system that would
- 05:20
mean the colder system would become more orderly That's never
- 05:24
going to happen Another way to think about the second
- 05:26
law of thermodynamics is toe pop the hood on your
- 05:28
car assuming you don't have an all electric car than
- 05:31
your engine has pistons which means it depends on heat
- 05:34
which makes it well a heat engine and an internal
- 05:37
combustion engine just like the one in this car has
- 05:40
pistons A piston basically hangs out in a hollow cylinder
- 05:43
at the top of the cylinder The piston is like
- 05:45
a plunger that creates a tight seal to keep all
- 05:47
the air inside So we've got gas inside the pittston
- 05:50
just hanging out doing it gas thing when suddenly a
- 05:53
heat source appears This makes the molecules in the gas
- 05:56
get excited and less dense which creates pressure in the
- 05:59
piston which pushes the piston up which makes the gears
- 06:02
of the engine turn which makes the wheels turn And
- 06:04
what do you now you're driving on The highway at
- 06:06
a sensible speed of course five miles under the speed
- 06:09
limit is best Okay so the gas expands greatjob gas
- 06:12
But if this process happens only once that's not going
- 06:15
to get you very far things have to cool down
- 06:17
so the piston khun sink back down and the whole
- 06:19
process can repeat it in a car This happens hundreds
- 06:22
of times a minute Where does that heat go Bingo
- 06:25
Out of the tailpipe any kind of heat engine has
- 06:28
to be able to dump heat into what's called a
- 06:31
reservoir In this case reservoir doesn't mean a big lake
- 06:34
full of drinking water It means something big enough to
- 06:36
be able to absorb all the heat that the engine
- 06:38
needs to get rid of In the case of a
- 06:40
car that means the heat goes through the tailpipe and
- 06:42
out into the atmosphere The atmosphere is big enough that
- 06:45
heat from a car doesn't have much effect on the
- 06:47
overall temperature Of course when you have a bunch of
- 06:50
cars with a bunch of pollution and greenhouse gases well
- 06:53
that's a topic for another much more depressing video With
- 06:56
the pistons going up and down we know that force
- 06:58
is being applied and things are moving which means work
- 07:01
is being done but since all the heat that's generated
- 07:03
is dumped into the exhaust system this process isn't one
- 07:06
hundred percent efficient And that brings us up to our
- 07:09
third and final way of looking at the second law
- 07:12
of thermodynamics It's impossible for a heat engine to convert
- 07:15
heat completely into work without any other effect In fact
- 07:20
there's a nice and clean equation to go along with
- 07:22
this idea the efficiency of a heat engine that's what
- 07:25
the epsilon stands for equals the work done w divided
- 07:29
by the heat that's input that's the cue sub h
- 07:32
because he can't be totally converted into work work will
- 07:36
always be less than the heat input and efficiency will
- 07:40
always be less than one Not everything in life is
- 07:42
about cars you know no matter what you're one uncle
- 07:45
who's obsessed with hot rods might say here's a basic
- 07:47
diagram of how another type of heat engine works We've
- 07:50
got a high temperature reservoir on the one end that
- 07:52
feeds into the engine which partially converts the heat toe
- 07:55
work Then it sends the excess heat That wasn't converted
- 07:58
down the line to the low temperature reservoir let's say
- 08:01
this engine does five thousand jewels of work while producing
- 08:04
nine thousand jewels of heat what's the efficiency of this
- 08:07
bad boy we just went over the equation for heat
- 08:09
engine efficiency but let's make sure we know how to
- 08:11
actually use it There has to be a difference in
- 08:14
temperature from the heat source to the cold reservoir otherwise
- 08:17
heat wouldn't flow and that would leave us with an
- 08:19
engine that date a whole lot of nothing Or maybe
- 08:22
something worse than nothing kind of defeats the whole purpose
- 08:25
of an engine And according to our thermodynamic lawyer the
- 08:28
engine doesn't convert all of the heat into work so
- 08:31
what's leftover has to exit the system So we've basically
- 08:34
got two different kinds of heat here We've got the
- 08:36
heat that enters the system we call that que ce
- 08:39
of h then we've got the heat that leaves the
- 08:41
system will make that cues up L so what do
- 08:44
we know in this situation For one thing we know
- 08:46
that the heat engine produces nine thousand jewels of heat
- 08:49
Is that the heat coming into the engine or leaving
- 08:52
the engine That would be our new friend q Sub
- 08:54
l since the engine is producing it and not taking
- 08:57
it in this nine thousand jewels is what the engine
- 08:59
is dumping into the reservoir And then we've got our
- 09:02
five thousand jewels of work Of course our efficiency equation
- 09:05
tells us that a heat engines efficiency equals the work
- 09:08
produced over the heat entering the engine We still don't
- 09:11
know how much heat is coming in but it's not
- 09:13
too tricky to figure out After all we know that
- 09:16
an engine is going to produce two things work that's
- 09:18
been converted from heat and heat not converted to work
- 09:21
So if we add these together we've got our starting
- 09:24
heat which means that we can rewrite our efficiency equation
- 09:27
by swapping out the heat coming into the engine for
- 09:29
the heat leaving the engine plus the work done Now
- 09:32
we just have to pop in our numbers and we're
- 09:34
all good Five thousand jewels divided by fourteen thousand jewels
- 09:37
gives us an efficiency of thirty five point seven percent
- 09:41
which isn't great I certainly hold myself to a higher
- 09:43
standard than that but that's the way It goes with
- 09:45
heat engines they're just not that great with the whole
- 09:48
efficiency thing Now let's say we've got an engine that
- 09:50
takes in sixty four thousand five hundred jewels of heat
- 09:53
and gives up fifty three thousand nine hundred jewels and
- 09:56
exhaust what's our efficiency here are equation uses work and
- 10:00
the heat input to figure this out but we don't
- 10:03
have work here That's okay though we can tackle this
- 10:05
in two different ways First we confined the work by
- 10:07
subtracting the heat leaving from the heat entering that tells
- 10:11
us how much heat was converted into work In this
- 10:13
case that comes to ten thousand six hundred jewels divide
- 10:17
that by good old cues up h and we've got
- 10:19
an efficiency of sixteen point four percent The other way
- 10:23
to figure this out is to start with one If
- 10:25
an engine was one hundred percent efficient the work would
- 10:27
equal the heat coming in so this ratio would equal
- 10:30
one From that we can subtract the result of the
- 10:32
heat leaving the system divided by the heat coming in
- 10:35
So one minus fifty three thousand nine hundred jewels over
- 10:38
sixty four thousand five hundred jewels gives us sixteen point
- 10:41
four percent efficiency See like the old saying goes there's
- 10:44
more than one way to clean the stove And of
- 10:46
course we always need to remember that as a result
- 10:49
of all this inefficiency and he dumping more entropy is
- 10:52
introduced into the universe There's no getting away from that
- 10:55
which is why i hate this stupid second law Why
- 10:58
can't we just make things more easily Wouldn't that make
- 11:01
the universe a better place No one actually likes chaos
- 11:04
do they Everything moving around going crazy no one and
- 11:07
forcing any rules people just doing whatever they want eating
- 11:10
whatever they want not caring about anything Tacos in the
- 11:13
street there are toilets to be clean young man Sometimes
- 11:16
i swear i'm the only one who cares about order 00:11:18.893 --> [endTime] in the universe
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