Follow-up Discussion on Thermodynamics

Here’s the follow-up to my discussion with friends who claim to have observed a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Of course, I get claims like this at the rate of at least once a week, and I pay very little attention to them. What makes this interesting is that one of them is a professional mechanical engineer, and they’re both well-educated people.

Friend #1: Craig, please read “Unobservable Universe.” It’ll give you a different perspective on physics and your laws of thermodynamics.

Friend #2: Actually it’s simpler than that. Magnets contain energy, but it is stored as potential energy. I think Craig is confusing ‘energy’ with ‘work’ (which is force x distance). Oddly enough, voltage is a measure of potential energy as well. It is the conversion from potential to kinetic energy that causes work, or energy x distance.

Friend #1: Potential energy, exactly… That’s Scott Tyson’s argument in The Unobservable Universe. You gotta read it, fellows. It will change your view of energy and matter in a very profound way.

Craig: Holy cow. What Friend #2 wrote here doesn’t make sense to me at all. Where I come from:

1) “Work” and “energy” are practically synonyms. Energy is the capacity to do work.
2) Energy = force X distance. i.e., the application of a force on an object across a distance
3) Energy also = voltage X current X time; voltage is not a measure of energy.

Having said that, I suppose I DO have to read this book. The reviews are good, and they seem to be written by people (like you both) who would know complete BS when they see it. Having said that, the reviews point to something that I find unsatisfactory: He’s replacing one untestable theory (string theory) with another. Hell, I’ll believe the Earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise if the consequences of that belief produce experimentally verifiable results.

So Friend #2, you saw a demonstration in Toronto of a motor that supplies continuous energy with no external energy applied? That clearly defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics, something that millions of people have been trying to do for thousands of years. But if there’s a working model, I want to see it. In fact, I’d ride my bicycle to Toronto to see it.