I have just had a student ask an intriguing question (at least to me).
Unfortuantely, I have no idea how to answer him, so I'm asking for help.
His question, cleaned up a bit, had to do with Lenz's Law for
Induction. He wanted to know if somehow it was tied to the idea in
thermodynamics that no "engine" could be 100% efficient. His reasoning
was that if The induced current wasn't in opposition to the inducing
flux, we could create a perpetual motion machine which would violate
entropy.
Now, I have never linked these two concepts together before. At first
blush it seems reasonable, but I don't feel comfortable enough with
either concept to say it is "definitively" so.