Timeline for Why is it so inefficient to generate electricity by absorbing heat?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Jun 12, 2018 at 4:05 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jun 12, 2018 at 9:54 | |||||
| Jan 9, 2018 at 18:35 | comment | added | joojaa | @Nat kindof, but its only true if you can integrate that lower level to some meaningful thought framework. If not then the underlying explanation is just as far from why as the formulation here. | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 17:50 | comment | added | Nat | @joojaa The question "Why [x]?" literally means "Explain [x] in more fundamental terms.". Physics does go to answer this question as we go down to more fundamental levels. Of course, as every parent knows when their child goes through the why?-phase, there's never any end to the why's; it's a recursive process down to the current level of ignorance, i.e. the current fundamental understanding. But to deny that physics addresses why?'s is to deny the ability to ever answer any why? question. | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 17:34 | comment | added | Nat | @DanielWagner is correct; physics does explain the why behind this stuff. For more on this topic, this answer provides useful information. Note their point that: "But this is an anachronism, since the second law is no longer considered fundamental but derived.". | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 15:06 | vote | accept | Random Name | ||
| Jan 9, 2018 at 15:06 | |||||
| Jan 9, 2018 at 14:26 | comment | added | user169874 | Who would have thought that if you put 100 trillion brain cells together you would get religion? | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 11:46 | history | edited | Dmitry Grigoryev | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 395 characters in body
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| Jan 9, 2018 at 10:14 | comment | added | joojaa | @DanielWagner No, physics never really answers the question "Why?". Just how. Even if you go to the next level down its still just answering a more detailed how. Weather or not you can use a lower level understanding to make a meaningful why in your logic framework, its still not fundamentally answering why. Now i agree that this is not a very good answer and indeed many thermodynamics effects are very simple on a fundamental level. In essence they are just random processes and millions of simple rules. However the end results are highly emergent, that is not self evident from the rules. | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 9:23 | comment | added | Daniel Wagner | @DmitryGrigoryev I cannot express how strongly I disagree. One can explain a law of physics by finding a more fundamental one and showing how it leads inexorably to the less fundamental one. I admit I am not a physicist; nevertheless given what I know of how detailed our understanding of, say, subatomic particles is, I would be shocked to learn that we had only experimental evidence for this equation and no understanding of how it might have arisen from other more fundamental phenomena. | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 7:44 | comment | added | Dmitry Grigoryev | @DanielWagner I don't think there is a logical answer to why the laws of physics are the way they are. | |
| Jan 9, 2018 at 2:05 | comment | added | user169874 | @DanielWagner because you carnot do any better than that, so everything else is less efficient. | |
| Jan 8, 2018 at 21:07 | comment | added | Daniel Wagner | This seems like a great (and very precise) explanation of what the limit is, but does nothing to answer the original question about why the limit exists. | |
| Jan 8, 2018 at 17:59 | comment | added | Steve | There is not even any such thing as a heat source, in the absence of a "cold source". | |
| Jan 8, 2018 at 16:21 | history | answered | Dmitry Grigoryev | CC BY-SA 3.0 |