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Keeping Sharp

Published by swansont on August 29, 2012 03:00 am under Physics

Reading Up On Thermodynamics

I am no uber-meister of thermodynamics either. That PhD thing I got helps, but I too have to go back, re-read the basics and then build up to the relevant literature on the subject I am studying. (This is true of all scientific work; you are always reviewing the basics.)

Oh so true. It’s one reason I spend time on the forms at this blog’s host, Science Forums (dot NET) — answering questions forces me to review basics that might have atrophied. It’s a constant battle.

Anyhow, I did (and continue to do) a lot of re-reading of my favorite thermo texts

I understand the individual words in “favorite thermo texts”, but taken together it makes no sense to me. Thermo being one of my least favorite parts of physics and all that.

1 Comment so far

  1. Uncle Al on August 29th, 2012

    Thermodynamics proposes, kinetics disposes. If you want to know all about an aspirin, ask a physicist. If you want an aspirin, ask a chemist. All have their place. Deep questions about the nature of reality – high temp supercons, symmetries of the vacuum toward matter, the fundamental nature of gravitation – are obviously physics, then reduced to engineering. That is why we fail.

    A hermetically isolated hard vacuum envelope contains two closely spaced but not touching, in-register and parallel, electrically conductive plates having micro-spiked inner surfaces. They are connected with a wire, perhaps containing a dissipative load (small motor). One plate has a high vacuum work function material inner surface (e.g., osmium at 5.93 eV). The other plate has a low vacuum work function material inner surface (e.g., n-doped diamond “carbon nitride” at 0.1 eV). Above 0 kelvin, spontaneous cold cathode emission runs the closed isolated system. The plates never come into thermal equilibrium when electrically shorted. The motor runs forever. A clever reader is invited to find the error. (Not a Shottky barrier – heavy doping, ohmic contact for the diamond.)

    Physical theory is a 40 year bust for parity violations, symmetry breakings, SUSY, quantum gravitations, high temp supercons… Ask a chemist. What is the worst it can do, succeed?

    (Diode answer: Go find the pertinent SSC-WF.pdf)

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