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Re: Entropy and states of matter




There ARE those scurrilous characters who say "This is Jim-Speak, whereby
heating provided on B by A is described as negative work done on A by B."

What could be more straight-forward?
Still, no right thinking physicist will endorse this translation.... or
will she?

Well, Brian, you may have added a complication: Heating by B on A is
usually accomplished by the hotter subsystem doing work on the cooler
subsystem but in the present case the cooler system does work on the hotter
one -- the cooling condensing molecules loose energy and do work on the
hotter molecules so we might well talk about negative work done by the
impinging system by the condensing system.

In any case neither energy or entropy "flows" -- They are not substances --
They are invented concepts and are _properties_ of their respective
systems. And there is no such _thing_ as "heat".

There is shortcut language, but its usage should not fog our thinking. For
clarity of discussions, at least think the process through before speaking
in shortcut. It is not difficult -- even for physicists.


Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen