Timeline for While holding an object, no work done but costs energy (in response to a similar question)
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Feb 18, 2014 at 14:20 | comment | added | DumpsterDoofus | @ChrisWhite: True, although the OP seemed more interested in whether the continual energy expenditure was something fundamental to physics or had to do with biology, and it's biology, so I didn't really touch on the physics much. If you post the gravity potential explanation, I'm sure people'd find it useful too. | |
| Feb 18, 2014 at 8:05 | comment | added | user10851 | This just avoids the question. Why does energy need to be supplied in order to keep in the same thermodynamic state? One can imagine a simple model wherein the polymers in your rubber band tend to (entropically) shorten, but every time they begin down that path they are pulled taut again by a regulatory mechanism. Useful energy is turned into heat via all the little pushes required to keep deviations from tautness small. Gravity, on the other hand, alters the potentials so as to make spontaneous shortening unlikely. There is a fundamental difference. | |
| Feb 18, 2014 at 6:06 | comment | added | BMS | What do you think of requiring energy to decrease the entropy, rather than simply keeping it at a lower value? | |
| Feb 18, 2014 at 5:37 | history | answered | DumpsterDoofus | CC BY-SA 3.0 |