How Many Laws Are There To Describe Heat?

Now that energy has been dealt with, there now follows the Scientific Equivalent of "What Happened Next....".

In other words, the detailed study of the way heat, or energy, behaved. This was branch of science was called "Thermodynamics" and was defined as the way "heat" (the "thermo" bit) "moved" (the "dynamics" bit).

There were found to be three laws. However, there was more than one way of stating them. The most common was :

1st Law of Thermodynamics: "In a perfectly insulated system, heat is neither lost nor created. "

2nd Law of Thermodynamics: "Perfectly insulated systems only exist at Absolute Zero of temperature. "

3rd Law of Thermodynamics: "Absolute Zero of temperature can never be attained. "

where the term "system" means an isolated bunch of things, such as a kitchen, or a bathroom.

The first Law is simply another way of stating the Conservation of Energy.
The second and third Laws together say 100% efficiency is impossible.

In other words, heat or energy can be freely exchanged but there will always be some unwanted heat produced.

Cynical scientists translate them this way:

Law 1: "You cannot make a profit, only break even"
Law 2: "You can only break even if banking is free"
Law 3; "The bank is always closed"

There's more.....after these three Laws were formulated and called Laws 1, 2 and 3, the scientists realised they had left out an even more fundamental truth than the conservation of energy. It was this:

"If two things have the same temperature as a third, they are at the same temperature as each other."

This was promptly recognised as the REAL first Law, but since they had already been named, it was put before the first Law. What do you call the number before one? Zero, of course.

It was called "The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics" and officially runs like this....

"If two bodies are both in equilibrium with a third, they are also in equilibrium with each other".

Just how gullible ARE you people? ROTFL!!!!

Buzzword Bingo

Office-Speak: The Art of saying something Very Ordinary using Flowery Speech. These are only a few of many examples of serious people trying to commmunicate something to others. Has English really been reduced to this? (From an article on the BBC website)

BEWARE! EXTREMELY FUNNY

1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada

2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England

3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist. And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand

4. "Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland

5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England

6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US

7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach, whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester

9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool

10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B

11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit."
Paul, Formby, UK

12. "And looking under the bonnet."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh

13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter

15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston

17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire

18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space. So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London

19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go."
Andy, Herts

20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together. 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada

21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London

22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton

23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one. To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London

24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend

25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by..."
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia

26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK

27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue. What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno

28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play, which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London

30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition. Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US

31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK

32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US

33. "I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban

34. "Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK

35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA

38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton

39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London

40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."
Andrew, London

41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela

42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK

43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US

44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff

45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London

46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK

47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico

48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down, which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London

49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York

50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya

Simply Unbelievable

Czech Republic v Turkey, round robin match. Do or die - win and you are in, lose and you are out.

Here we go again. The European Soccer Championships is upon us. 16 National sides battle it out to become the COUNTRY best in soccer, as opposed to the CLUB Championship, which is called the European Champions League.

I am really glad we stayed up to watch this on Star Sports Asia this morning, as it turned out to be the most dramatic comeback ever seen in the competition.

For the first time ever, even though it was a group match, if the teams were level at the end the rules say it must decided by penalties, as they both would be level on points, goal difference and goals scored.

Then the Czech Republic scored a goal, and then soon after, another.

Czech Republic 2, Turkey 0

Then came the 75th minute, out of 90. I have never seen anything like this. Watch and enjoy.

Don't listen to the unenthusiatic EPSN reporters, they know nothing of the excitement that this match generated in Europe.

The Heat of the Moment

This one is very basic, but delves into one of the most fundamental concepts in all physics.

Energy.

We have all heard that word, but what does it mean, really?

For Physics fans, the word "energy" means "the ability to do something else".

For all others, it may mean "something to keep you going".

Both are correct.

To actually understand what "energy" is, though, a journey into how the word came about may be in order.

Way back when science was fairly young, but there were thinkers with labs (1800-1900 will do), they investigated heat and what it did. They discovered that in general, the hotter something was, the bigger it got (expansion) ( Due to something called the Lennard-Jones 6-12 potential, but that is beyond the scope of this post )

So, what was heat? Well, by careful experiments , a lot by Lord kelvin, they found out that if you cooled something down, the heat would go somewhere else. They also found that you could actually convert mechanical movement into heat AND BACK again. ]

They did a collective "Hmmmm", and the idea was born that there must be something that cannot be created or destroyed, but only converted. They called this the more general name of "energy".

There are many different types of energy, but all are equivalent and interchangeable. You have kinetic energy (from movement), potential energy (from position), but the most common one is known as heat. Heat comes about by something jiggling the atoms in a thing. The more hot it is, the bigger the jiggling, and if the jiggling is larger, the things expands because the atoms need more room to jiggle.

Ok, so that's heat. Movement in other words, but then again there are different types of movement. Travel in a car is one of the best examples. We say the car has "kinetic" energy because it is moving. Where does this energy come from? Again, the car is one of the best examples of energy conversion.

What makes it go? Why, the gas, of course. Gas has energy tied up in the long hydrocarbon molecules ( a molecule is simply two or more atoms bound together chemically )So what does the engine do?

Well, you put the gas in, and inside the car, a piston squashes the air/gas mix, and when done, a spark makes a bang in it. This bang is a small explosion and releases energy from the chemical bonds and this "internal combustion" is powerful enough to push the piston down very hard in it's tube. So now the piston has converted the energy of the bang into kinetic energy.

The piston is attached via a gudgeon pin and this pin converts the linear energy (straight line) to rotational energy of the crankshaft. The downward motion of the piston has now been converted to a spinning motion. But how does this spinning motion get to the wheels? Engines come in two basic types, depending on the relative orientation of the crankshaft (the spindle that gets the energy from the piston) and the drive shaft ( the spindle that drives the wheels). They can either be parallel or at right angles. The part that connects these two spindles is called the "differential".

So, we have now converted the piston energy to the crankshaft energy, and now the differential converts this energy to the drive shaft.

Not finished yet! The drive shaft turns the wheels and the wheels trundle the car along. However, the wheels only move the car because the rubber on the tyres stops the wheels slipping. This is called "friction" and is a major source of energy loss. Hang on! LOSS? But didn't I just say that energy cannot be destroyed? Yes, I did and when I say "lost" I really mean "lost from the source of the energy" ie the gasoline.

So where does it go? Well, as intimated, energy has lots of forms, and the lost energy is lost as sound energy, friction energy, and believe it or not, heating of the road, heating of the rubber, and worst of all, energy is even given to the earth to increase it's rotation! Ok, Ok, so that effect is very small, and may not even be measurable, but it is there.

In all, the internal Combustion Engine is very inefficient, in other words, you can never get all the energy from the gas, and in fact, it is impossible even in principle ( this is called the 2nd law of thermodynamics - see next post)At most, cars only get about 15% of the energy available from the gas. It's a bit like travel. You cannot convert ALL your cash to a different currency, because the exchange people take commission.

In a car, lots of processes take commission. Lets' list some places where energy is lost:

1. Friction inside the supply pipes that bring the gas to the piston.
2. Friction inside the piston.
3. Inefficiency of the combustion.
4. Friction between piston and crankshaft.
5. Friction between crankshaft and differential.
6. Friction between differential and driveshaft.
7. Friction between driveshaft and wheel.
8. Friction on the road.

As can be seen, energy is a complicated business.

As an exercise, try this. A light bulb is held at arms length and released. There are two main energy processes, what are they?

PLUS - how many more subsidiary energy processes can you figure out (hint - think of the car above)? There are at least four!

Super Energy Idea?

My ruminations have now led to this:

The uncertainty principle says that you can never know the exact momentum AND position of a particle at the same time.

This has been proven and the Fat Lady has sung.

It also led to the veneration of the third Law of thermodynamics, which says that "Absolute Zero can never be attained"

Why?

Because if it were, and because heat is defined as movement/vibration of atoms, they would all be still at Absolute Zero.

Since quantum mechanics rules all at microscopic levels, we have to conclude that the uncertainty principle says that atoms MUST vibrate no matter how cold it is. They can't do anything else, because if they were still (at Absolute Zero), it would violate the uncertainty principle.

Therefore all atoms must always vibrate.

At all times.

Forever.

Aside from the question as to where this energy came from, may it not be used to source an unlimited supply of free power? After all, it's there to be tapped.

Why has it not been done?


Is this limitless power from almost nothing?

Gedanken for the Memory part 3

There's more. IF a space station that big is ever built( and a couple of light days across is PRETTY big!), as was intimated, the broom would have to be at least a couple of dozen light-hours long to even feel the ceiling curving towards it.

The question now changes - would you be able to see this far such detail with the naked eye?

The answer is a resounding "No!", assuming it was of zero weight of course( is this assumption number 3 or just unrealistic?)

My first thought upon realising this was "Is this some sort of limiting principle, akin to the uncertainty principle, whereby in order to "see" the broom hit the ceiling, you'd be too far away that the resolution of the eye prevented the viewing?" But then I remembered telescopes. But then I also remembered that light would take up to 12-24 hours to reach you to tell you of the event. Is this relevant also? Had I hit upon an undiscovered principle here without knowing it?

I was right in the first place...there IS more to this than meets the eye...

Here's another one; What if the broom was curved just enough to allow for the curve of the station? then what?

Well, you would push it all the way around the station, and it would poke you in the back (or bum in my case) . Would you feel it or see it first?

And then there's the problem that the actual critical radius is along the middle of the corridor, ie, you are not actually looking along it.

More to come, I think!

ABYSS (Akiko's Black Hole Space Station)

Welcome to Akiko's Black Hole Space Station (or ABYSS), the result of the previous 2 Gedanken experiments.

The image is in 3 parts. (download and enlarge - I have given a lot of thought to this one so there is a lot on the image)

The Diagram (What is happening). A circular (torus or donut) shaped space station is constructed around a black hole. But not at just any old radius. A black hole pulls light into it like everything else, but there is a critical radius past which light escapes. The ABYSS is constructed around this. if you stand on the floor, your feet will point toward the center, making the ceiling, just above your head, the outer radius of the ABYSS.

1. The Action ( As you see it) Because the critical radius along which light orbits is in the middle of the corridor, if you stand there and say "Hello", you will see an infinitely long, but STRAIGHT ABYSS, with infinitely many views of the back of your head.

The dark area happens because light cannot escape from "below" the critical radius. You are now holding an extendable sweep's broom, pointed in front of you, and you push it forward.

2. The Reality (what actually happens). As you extend the broom, you know the broom is straight, and you know the ABYSS is curved, so you would expect the broom to "hit" the ceiling if you extend it parallel to the floor.

BUT what do you see, if you perceive the ABYSS to be "straight"?

My answer is that you will see the broom apparently curve upwards to meet the ceiling, even though it is straight.

Or do you? Since your head is NOT exactly in line with the critical radius, do you actually see the ABYSS at all, and is it straight or curved?

This thought experiment makes assumptions, two of the biggest are;

1. The feat of making the ABYSS is technically possible.

2. There are NO tidal effects.

Te last one bears a little thought. To reduce tidal effects to a negligible amount, you'd have to find a black hole at least (my guess) a few light-days across. This makes the perception that the curved ABYSS is curved or straight redundant, as it would be so big as to LOOK straight anyway. Thus you'd need a broom at least a dozen light-hours in length for it to hit the curved ceiling.

This is why it is called a thought experiment.

Aki LIVE on Boracay Island

The video on the front page here was done because I HATE CAMS!!!!

Added today at 1636 at hit count 8150. Up to now, the hit rate has been 34 per day. from April 6th.

In the past month, to July 7th, the hit rate has gone up to 39 per day.

Gedanken for the Memory Part 2

This thought experiment requires a lot more thought than at first meets the eye. Watch for part three for a set of diagrams IN MY HANDWRITING!!!

First you have to remember that the space station is built around a huge black hole so that tidal effects are minimal.

Remember that there is a light orbit, that is, at a certain radius from the center, light neither falls into nor out of the black hole. A little more thought tells you that this "orbit" is extremely thin, and let us further say that this radius is at the center of the station. Now, you are standing in the station with your feet pointing towards the center, and this "radius" goes right through your middle. Even without the broom, what would you see?

Well, since any light below the radius cannot get out, anything below your waist is completely black, and although you do not know it, you cannot get your legs back!

Also, the space station my be curved, but because the light in it is curved, all you will see is half a straight corridor.

Now, imagine your broom is one of the old-fashioned sweep's brooms, that is, is extendable. As you tacked on extensions, what would you see at the tip of the broom?

It gets weirder, as I have now worked it out!

How Old Are You? "I'm Twenteen"

Part of my repertoire is teaching English to Korean kids. I get the odd "How old are you?" - "I am fine" responses, but this clip is far funnier.

It is part of a TV show broadcast from Manila at 1300 daily called "Wowowee". It is very popular because it gives the poorer people a chance to earn some hard cash by "performing" on camera. Last time I was in Manila there was a stampede to get onto the show in the queue outside the TV station, several people being hurt.

Although English is widely understood in the Philippines, and is the official business language, the poorer people do not know the language as well as they should because education is expensive there. In this section, a young girl has to hold a conversation in English in order to earn her prize money.

It is very funny. Please note that ther presenter and the audience are not laughing AT her, but WITH her. Another presenter of nickname RR (the one in pink below), gives the line above, and is even less knowledgeable than the contestant! She also says " I have been there once. But not twice"

Whenever I am in Manila, this is the show I like to see, along with Who Wants to be a Millionaire (in Taglish).

Enjoy!




My thanks to Raquel for providing this feature. Coincidentally, the girl has the same birthday as Yuko, my cousin!