Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that appears to disprove the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. [ 1 ] In his first letter, Maxwell referred to the entity as a "finite being" or a "being who can play a game of skill with the molecules".
The biological equivalent of Maxwell's "finite being" is a molecular demon. According to Landauer's principle, the demon must record the state of each molecule, and the eventual erasure of that information would return entropy to the system. [6] In aphorism 341 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche puts forth his eternal recurrence concept. In it, he ...
N-atom engine schematic. A physical thought experiment demonstrating how just the possession of information might in principle have thermodynamic consequences was established in 1929 by Leó Szilárd, in a refinement of the famous Maxwell's demon scenario [5] (and a reversal of the Joule expansion thought experiment).
When the demon is reset i.e. when the ligand is released, the information is erased, energy is dissipated and entropy increases obeying the second law of thermodynamics. [1] The difference between biological molecular demons and the thought experiment of Maxwell's demon is the latter's apparent violation of the second law. [2] [3]
James Clerk Maxwell. James Clerk Maxwell imagined one container divided into two parts, A and B. Both parts are filled with the same gas at equal temperatures and placed next to each other, separated by a wall. Observing the molecules on both sides, an imaginary demon guards a microscopic trapdoor in the wall.
The simple machine, consisting of a tiny paddle wheel and a ratchet, appears to be an example of a Maxwell's demon, able to extract mechanical work from random fluctuations (heat) in a system at thermal equilibrium, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Detailed analysis by Feynman and others showed why it cannot actually do this.
Harvey S. Leff (July 24, 1937 – December 30, 2023) was an American physicist and physics teacher who is known primarily for his research and expository articles in physics, focusing on energy, entropy, Maxwell's demon, and the foundations of thermodynamics. He introduced the 'energy spreading' metaphor for entropy change.
Maxwell (crater) Maxwell (unit) Maxwell & Demon Gargoyle; Maxwell bridge; Maxwell material; Maxwell Montes; Maxwell relations; Maxwell stress tensor; Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution; Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics; Maxwell–Stefan diffusion; Maxwell's demon; Maxwell's equations; Maxwell's theorem; Maxwell's theorem (geometry) The Maxwellians