Thermodynamics Quotes - Page 2

• It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance.

  Barry Commoner

  Technology, Law, Inheritance

  Interview With Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

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• Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections.

  Ted Chiang

  Lovely, Fundamentals, Levels

  Ted Chiang (2016). “Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)”, p.52, Vintage

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• It was not easy for a person brought up in the ways of classical thermodynamics to come around to the idea that gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Loss, Ideas, Information

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• I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer.

  Neil Armstrong

  White, Pockets, Diagrams

  "The Engineered Century". Neil Armstrong's remarks during National Engineers Week on behalf of the National Academy of Engineering at the National Press Club, www.nae.edu. February 22, 2000.

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• There is only one law of Nature-the second law of thermodynamics-which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time.

  Arthur Eddington

  Time, Knowledge, Science

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• It is possible to express the laws of thermodynamics in the form of independent principles , deduced by induction from the facts of observation and experiment, without reference to any hypothesis as to the occult molecular operations with which the sensible phenomena may be conceived to be connected; and that course will be followed in the body of the present treatise. But, in giving a brief historical sketch of the progress of thermodynamics, the progress of the hypothesis of thermic molecular motions cannot be wholly separated from that of the purely inductive theory.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Independent, Law, Giving

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1869). “A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine”, p.28

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• In all cases where work is produced by heat, a quantity of heat proportional to the work done is expended; and inversely, by the expenditure of a like quantity of work, the same amount of heat may be produced.

  Rudolf Clausius

  Done, May, Heat

  "On the Moving Force of Heat, and the Laws Regarding the Nature of Heat Itself Which Are Deducible Therefrom" (1851)

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• The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.

  J. Willard Gibbs

  Order, Law, Numbers

  "Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics". Book by J. Willard Gibbs (Preface, p. 8), 1902.

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• In thermodynamics as well as in other branches of molecular physics , the laws of phenomena have to a certain extent been anticipated, and their investigation facilitated, by the aid of hypotheses as to occult molecular structures and motions with which such phenomena are assumed to be connected. The hypothesis which has answered that purpose in the case of thermodynamics, is called that of "molecular vortices," or otherwise, the "centrifugal theory of elasticity.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Purpose, Branches

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1869). “A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine”, p.32

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• Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Views, Expression

  Jacques Monod (1971). “Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology”

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• I don't. We've had three technological revolutions that have changed the course of human history, all driven by physics. In the first, the industrial revolution, physicists developed Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics, which gave us the steam engine and machine power. The second technological revolution was the electricity revolution. That gave us radio, television, and telecommunications. Then, physicists developed the laser and the transistor.

  Michio Kaku

  Revolution, Physics, Mechanic

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Running, Simple, Law

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• According to Bastardi,  human-induced climate change "contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have to come from a foreign source.

  Joe Bastardi

  Law, Atmosphere, Energy

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• In fact, the science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine, and this constitutes one of the few famous cases in which engineering has contributed to fundamental physical theory. Another example that comes to mind is the more recent analysis of information theory by Claude Shannon. These two analyses, incidentally, turn out to be closely related.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Engineering, Two, Mind

  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Physics textbook by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands, volume I; lecture 44, "The Laws of Thermodynamics"; section 44-1, "Heat engines; the first law"; p. 44-2, 1964.

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• The use of thermodynamics in biology has a long history rich in confusion.

  Harold Morowitz

  Long, Confusion, Use

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• I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

  Alan Lightman

  Law, Play, Ideas

  Alan Lightman (2000). “Great Ideas in Physics”, p.1, McGraw Hill Professional

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• Every heat engineer knows he can design his heat engine reliably and accurately on the foundation of the second law [of thermodynamics]. Run alongside one of the molecules, however, and ask it what it thinks of the second law. It will laugh at us. It never heard of the second law. It does what it wants. All the same, a collection of billions upon billions of such molecules obeys the second law with all the accuracy one could want

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Running, Thinking, Law

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• The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Sea, Law, Water

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush (1995). “Maxwell on Heat and Statistical Mechanics: On "avoiding All Personal Enquiries" of Molecules”, p.205, Lehigh University Press

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• And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire? I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you." The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut trees nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp, musky smell of his body next to mine. "Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." "That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. "No," he said. "That's faith.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Summer, Wind, Law

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series Bundle: Books 1, 2, 3, and 4: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn”, p.3834, Delacorte Press

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• Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards.

  Jane Fonda

  Mean, Law, Decay

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• In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Men, Nuclear, Neutrons

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.187, Penguin

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• Enchanting is not the word that would immediately spring to mind when describing a play that deals with fractal geometry, iterated algorithms, chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, but it is a perfect fit for Tom Stoppard's astonishing 1993 play, which is as beautiful as it is brilliant. This is one Stoppard drama that you don't have to be Einstein to understand -- you can feel it as well as think it. (...) Breathtaking, exhilarating and deeply satisfying.

  Lyn Gardner

  Beautiful, Drama, Spring

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• Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  College, Helping Others, Greatness

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• There's no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever.

  Ben Stein

  Physics, Fluid, Gravity

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• We define thermodynamics ... as the investigation of the dynamical and thermal properties of bodies, deduced entirely from the first and second law of thermodynamics, without speculation as to the molecular constitution.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Law, Body, Firsts

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