The paper says that it is working at a temperature of 135 C, which is
relatively elevated.
I agree that this does violate the second law, in that it is doing work
but there is not a heat source and sink. However, as my son, who knows
more about physics than I do says, the second law is not so much a law,
merely a guideline. There are a number of situations where it does not
hold, so we can add this to the list.
One Achilles heal of the second law would appear to be pumped Bose
condensates such as lasers, so it is no great surprise to find an
example here.
However, we only get over unity at less than <10E-10 watts, so its
practical application at this point is somewhat limited. But maybe
with a little more research....
Nigel
On 28/02/2012 17:38, Harry Veeder wrote:
According to the second law you can only get a system to do "work" if
parts of the system are at different temperatures. In this situation
the system is a diode and it does work by converting heat into light.
It is hard to tell from the description, but I am guessing the entire
diode is at an elevated temperature.
harry
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Daniel Rocha<danieldi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Why do you think it would violate the 2nd law? I don't understand.
2012/2/28 Harry Veeder<hveeder...@gmail.com>
however, wouldn't this require a violation of the second law of
thermodynamics?
Harry
--
Daniel Rocha - RJ
danieldi...@gmail.com
