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Bristol Philadelphia : Institute of Physics, 2003 Maxwell's demon 2 : entropy, classical and quantum information, computing.

A gentle introduction, a bit less technical than this entry. Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire – and other Papers on the Second Law of Thermodynamics by E.

There are almost as many formulations of the second law as there have been discussions of it. Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley, Principia Discordia (1965) “ The tendency for entropy to increase in isolated systems is expressed in the second law of thermodynamics - perhaps the most pessimistic and amoral formulation in all human thought. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927) “ But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. A heat engine is a mechanical device that provides useful work from the difference in temperature of two bodies. Pressure, density and temperature differences in an isolated system, all tend to equalize if given the opportunity density and pressure, but not temperature, are affected by gravity. In a general sense, the second law says that temperature differences between systems in contact with each other tend to even out and that work can be obtained from these non-equilibrium differences, but that loss of thermal energy occurs, when work is done and entropy increases.