Re: Non-conservative forces in a liquid dielectric

[Pentcho Valev <pvalev@BAS.BG>]

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> . .
>
> I am puzzled. Work amounts to organized energy
> (elevating an object, for example) while heat amounts
> to random molecular energy. An engine creating
> macroscopic order out of microscopic disorder,
> without creating disorder elsewhere, does seem
> to violate the second law of thermodynamics.
> Where is the "elsewhere" required by the law?

This is just one of the numerous myths in thermodynamics, Ludwik. When a
gas pushes a piston, isothermally, it converts heat into work without
creating disorder elsewhere. When an electrochemical cell does work
(lifts a weight), the same story. When osmotic pressure does work,
again. When an endothermic chemical reaction proceeds spontaneously,
heat is converted into energy of the chemical bonds which can also be
regarded as conversion of heat into work. Perhaps in some structureless
universe the difference between heat and work would be somehow expressed
but the property of matter to form structures which can serve as heat
engines reduces this difference to zero. As Jim Green once put it "heat
is work".
     Unfortunately in order to maintain the myth of the inferior nature
of heat and guarantee their salaries, generations of thermodynamicists
have systematically mutilated physical science by removing any such
effects from the curriculum. Of course things are by no means that
simple - there are subtleties that would allow them to win the debate if
someone tried to criticise them. Still the overall effect is easy to see
- half of thermal physics - that part which would have dealt with
conversion of heat into work - simply does not exist. A curious
consequence: All textbooks discuss the temperature dependence of
dielectric effects but none of them has ever hinted that this might be
due to the action of a non-conservative force.

Pentcho