
Ep 122: ”Work and Heat” - Chiara Marletto’s ”The Science of Can and Can’t” Chapter 6 Readings & Discussion.
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Reversing Heat Like Energy Transfers
In a world where all elementary interactions are reversible, once the energy has gone in to molecules of air and vibrational motions of atoms, it becomes tough to bring it back. If reversing heat like energy fers were just very hard to achieve, but ultimately possible, the second law would not really be a fundamental law. In fact, there would be no reason for physics to distinguish between work like and heat like. There would be no irreducible, irreversibility. All energy transfers would be work like that is reversible, only a little harder to achieve in the reverse direction compared with the forward direction. With enough technological resources, the reversible dyna mics could always bring all energy
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