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Description:

What is the second law of thermodynamics? That's the one about a Thermos being the most dynamic of all drinking containers, right? Uh, wrong. Basically, it has to do with entropy, chaos, and heat, oh my.

Language:
English Language
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Transcript

00:01

No the second law of thermodynamics Why making a mis

00:06

is just part of physics into chaos Cleaning doesn't violate

00:14

the laws of physics But your parents The key to

00:21

a happy life is to make sure everything is in

00:24

its place But you spend most of your waking life

00:27

making sure things are organized and properly stored The rest

00:31

of your life will be so much happier and sure

00:33

you could take this advice too far Theoretically But we

00:36

have to do everything we can to fight disorder because

00:38

the universe is fighting back against us Stupid messy universe

00:42

What does a clean bedroom have to be with physics

00:44

to answer that question let's talk about thermodynamics The first

00:48

law of thermodynamics says that energy can't be destroyed or

00:51

created All the energy in the universe already exists It's

00:54

not going anywhere And no new energy is going toe

00:58

walk through the front door The second law of thermodynamics

01:00

actually has a few different definitions or different ways We

01:03

can understand it Have you ever dropped a few ice

01:06

cubes in a glass of soda and then forgot it

01:08

on the counter I haven't But let's assume you have

01:11

when you come back It's a gross water down disaster

01:13

What happened Heat transfer happened That's what heat moves from

01:16

the warmer soda into the colder ice Cubes making them

01:19

melt so why didn't it work the other way around

01:22

Why didn't the heat go from the ice cubes of

01:24

the soda Sure the ice cubes are super cold but

01:27

they still have internal energy but it would be pretty

01:29

freaky if you put ice and soda and the ice

01:32

somehow got colder and yeah turns out that never happens

01:35

It's actually impossible it would break the second law of

01:38

thermodynamics One way to explain the second law is to

01:41

say that he'd always flows from a higher temperature system

01:44

to a lower temperature system and it never ever goes

01:47

the other way around That just makes sense it's one

01:50

of those things that's so obvious you wonder why they

01:52

even had to write it down I'm not judging but

01:54

it turned out that the second law is a little

01:56

more complicated than that because the second law of thermodynamics

01:59

is really about entropy which is a fancy science word

02:02

for disorder or chaos The best definition of the second

02:06

law of thermodynamics is as follows in all natural processes

02:10

The total entropy of a system and its surrounding environment

02:13

either stays the same or increases entropy Never decreases To

02:18

put that a normal person speak things always become more

02:21

disorderly if we consider both the system and the environment

02:24

around them Let's say it's a wonderful day for fun

02:27

and we get to spend eight hours organizing the house

02:31

It doesn't get any better than that does it Just

02:33

a full day of organizing and tiding by the time

02:36

you're done it's almost as if you can't detect any

02:39

sign of human life at all It's perfect it's Wonderful

02:42

it's Sorry What was i saying Oh right entropy So

02:46

we just showed that there can be less disorder in

02:48

the universe At least here in our little pocket of

02:51

it Right Sorry But now first of all any time

02:53

you have that much fun you're going to work up

02:55

a sweat That means heat came off of you and

02:58

went into the air And when you heat molecules up

03:00

they move around and vibrate and just get all worked

03:02

up which means they get more chaotic and as you

03:06

scurry around putting things away had also disturbs molecules in

03:09

the air opening and closing dresser drawers putting things on

03:12

hangers The joyful act of throwing junk Away all of

03:14

that involves friction which means heat which means chaos There

03:18

is no escaping it it's enough to drive you crazy

03:21

but we don't get crazy because crazy is chaos and

03:23

chaos is the enemy keep calm and clean on another

03:26

example of this happens when we have a bouncy ball

03:28

We've all played with one of these super balls that

03:31

bounce like crazy right If you drop a super ball

03:33

without adding any extra energy to it it'll bounce back

03:36

up pretty high but it won't bounce all the way

03:39

back up to where it started Part of that is

03:41

due to gravity Part of that is also due to

03:43

entropy right before the ball hits the ground It's got

03:46

a lot of kinetic energy as it hit the ball

03:49

do forms a little creating elastic potential energy Then it

03:53

snaps back into its original shape which is why it

03:56

bounces back up into the air The ground also deformed

03:59

a little bit too And all of this d formation

04:01

makes the molecules all jumpy So some of the kinetic

04:04

energy of the ball is transferred into internal energy of

04:07

the ball and the ground internal energy Means ah higher

04:11

temperature And in fact if you had some thermometer keeping

04:14

track of the super ball you'd see it tick up

04:16

just a little bit like one or two tenths of

04:18

a degree Maybe the ground's temperature would go up a

04:21

teeny bit too Since some of the kinetic energy is

04:23

converted into internal energy the ball loses some goof on

04:27

its bounce and you guessed it more chaos is created

04:30

There's just no way around it Okay Circling back How

04:33

is entropy related to our first explanation of this thermodynamics

04:37

law Remember we said that heat flows from the warmer

04:40

system to the cooler system Think of it like this

04:43

which is more orderly A block of ice or a

04:45

bowl of water It's the ice without a question Molecules

04:49

and a solid are tightly aligned there's no molecular slipping

04:52

and sliding like you havin a liquid and in general

04:55

a colder system has less chaos than a warmer one

04:58

The molecules are moving more slowly they're vibrating less their

05:01

little molecular shoes air neatly stacked up Ah hot system

05:05

means chaos galore Molecules banging into each other electrons flying

05:09

around willy nilly shoes never being put Away oh it

05:12

makes me it's just thinking about it Entropy will always

05:15

increase or stay the same If heat float out of

05:18

a cooler system and into a warmer system that would

05:20

mean the colder system would become more orderly That's never

05:24

going to happen Another way to think about the second

05:26

law of thermodynamics is toe pop the hood on your

05:28

car assuming you don't have an all electric car than

05:31

your engine has pistons which means it depends on heat

05:34

which makes it well a heat engine and an internal

05:37

combustion engine just like the one in this car has

05:40

pistons A piston basically hangs out in a hollow cylinder

05:43

at the top of the cylinder The piston is like

05:45

a plunger that creates a tight seal to keep all

05:47

the air inside So we've got gas inside the pittston

05:50

just hanging out doing it gas thing when suddenly a

05:53

heat source appears This makes the molecules in the gas

05:56

get excited and less dense which creates pressure in the

05:59

piston which pushes the piston up which makes the gears

06:02

of the engine turn which makes the wheels turn And

06:04

what do you now you're driving on The highway at

06:06

a sensible speed of course five miles under the speed

06:09

limit is best Okay so the gas expands greatjob gas

06:12

But if this process happens only once that's not going

06:15

to get you very far things have to cool down

06:17

so the piston khun sink back down and the whole

06:19

process can repeat it in a car This happens hundreds

06:22

of times a minute Where does that heat go Bingo

06:25

Out of the tailpipe any kind of heat engine has

06:28

to be able to dump heat into what's called a

06:31

reservoir In this case reservoir doesn't mean a big lake

06:34

full of drinking water It means something big enough to

06:36

be able to absorb all the heat that the engine

06:38

needs to get rid of In the case of a

06:40

car that means the heat goes through the tailpipe and

06:42

out into the atmosphere The atmosphere is big enough that

06:45

heat from a car doesn't have much effect on the

06:47

overall temperature Of course when you have a bunch of

06:50

cars with a bunch of pollution and greenhouse gases well

06:53

that's a topic for another much more depressing video With

06:56

the pistons going up and down we know that force

06:58

is being applied and things are moving which means work

07:01

is being done but since all the heat that's generated

07:03

is dumped into the exhaust system this process isn't one

07:06

hundred percent efficient And that brings us up to our

07:09

third and final way of looking at the second law

07:12

of thermodynamics It's impossible for a heat engine to convert

07:15

heat completely into work without any other effect In fact

07:20

there's a nice and clean equation to go along with

07:22

this idea the efficiency of a heat engine that's what

07:25

the epsilon stands for equals the work done w divided

07:29

by the heat that's input that's the cue sub h

07:32

because he can't be totally converted into work work will

07:36

always be less than the heat input and efficiency will

07:40

always be less than one Not everything in life is

07:42

about cars you know no matter what you're one uncle

07:45

who's obsessed with hot rods might say here's a basic

07:47

diagram of how another type of heat engine works We've

07:50

got a high temperature reservoir on the one end that

07:52

feeds into the engine which partially converts the heat toe

07:55

work Then it sends the excess heat That wasn't converted

07:58

down the line to the low temperature reservoir let's say

08:01

this engine does five thousand jewels of work while producing

08:04

nine thousand jewels of heat what's the efficiency of this

08:07

bad boy we just went over the equation for heat

08:09

engine efficiency but let's make sure we know how to

08:11

actually use it There has to be a difference in

08:14

temperature from the heat source to the cold reservoir otherwise

08:17

heat wouldn't flow and that would leave us with an

08:19

engine that date a whole lot of nothing Or maybe

08:22

something worse than nothing kind of defeats the whole purpose

08:25

of an engine And according to our thermodynamic lawyer the

08:28

engine doesn't convert all of the heat into work so

08:31

what's leftover has to exit the system So we've basically

08:34

got two different kinds of heat here We've got the

08:36

heat that enters the system we call that que ce

08:39

of h then we've got the heat that leaves the

08:41

system will make that cues up L so what do

08:44

we know in this situation For one thing we know

08:46

that the heat engine produces nine thousand jewels of heat

08:49

Is that the heat coming into the engine or leaving

08:52

the engine That would be our new friend q Sub

08:54

l since the engine is producing it and not taking

08:57

it in this nine thousand jewels is what the engine

08:59

is dumping into the reservoir And then we've got our

09:02

five thousand jewels of work Of course our efficiency equation

09:05

tells us that a heat engines efficiency equals the work

09:08

produced over the heat entering the engine We still don't

09:11

know how much heat is coming in but it's not

09:13

too tricky to figure out After all we know that

09:16

an engine is going to produce two things work that's

09:18

been converted from heat and heat not converted to work

09:21

So if we add these together we've got our starting

09:24

heat which means that we can rewrite our efficiency equation

09:27

by swapping out the heat coming into the engine for

09:29

the heat leaving the engine plus the work done Now

09:32

we just have to pop in our numbers and we're

09:34

all good Five thousand jewels divided by fourteen thousand jewels

09:37

gives us an efficiency of thirty five point seven percent

09:41

which isn't great I certainly hold myself to a higher

09:43

standard than that but that's the way It goes with

09:45

heat engines they're just not that great with the whole

09:48

efficiency thing Now let's say we've got an engine that

09:50

takes in sixty four thousand five hundred jewels of heat

09:53

and gives up fifty three thousand nine hundred jewels and

09:56

exhaust what's our efficiency here are equation uses work and

10:00

the heat input to figure this out but we don't

10:03

have work here That's okay though we can tackle this

10:05

in two different ways First we confined the work by

10:07

subtracting the heat leaving from the heat entering that tells

10:11

us how much heat was converted into work In this

10:13

case that comes to ten thousand six hundred jewels divide

10:17

that by good old cues up h and we've got

10:19

an efficiency of sixteen point four percent The other way

10:23

to figure this out is to start with one If

10:25

an engine was one hundred percent efficient the work would

10:27

equal the heat coming in so this ratio would equal

10:30

one From that we can subtract the result of the

10:32

heat leaving the system divided by the heat coming in

10:35

So one minus fifty three thousand nine hundred jewels over

10:38

sixty four thousand five hundred jewels gives us sixteen point

10:41

four percent efficiency See like the old saying goes there's

10:44

more than one way to clean the stove And of

10:46

course we always need to remember that as a result

10:49

of all this inefficiency and he dumping more entropy is

10:52

introduced into the universe There's no getting away from that

10:55

which is why i hate this stupid second law Why

10:58

can't we just make things more easily Wouldn't that make

11:01

the universe a better place No one actually likes chaos

11:04

do they Everything moving around going crazy no one and

11:07

forcing any rules people just doing whatever they want eating

11:10

whatever they want not caring about anything Tacos in the

11:13

street there are toilets to be clean young man Sometimes

11:16

i swear i'm the only one who cares about order 00:11:18.893 --> [endTime] in the universe

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