I have a question from the second law violation we saw the other day in class. Is it really a 2nd law violation? I think thermodynamics is a "macroscopic" science and has to be read in therms of a global well averaged quantities. In the case we studied in class the average of the dissipative work was allways positive, indeed in a big enough system we will find low-likely states in which the 2nd law is violated. So, is there really a violation of the second law? or is it simply a language abuse?
1 comment:
Yes and no....
As we saw in class for that average being positive it is required (always, in any system!!) that some trajectories have a negative dissipation. You can consider that those trajectories can be neglected in a macroscopic system (but anyway they are there when you consider the whole (infinite) average). Therefore, if you consider violation as the result of the average then there is no violation. On the other hand, if you consider violation as a question of individual trajectories then there is violation for SOME of the trajectories. Still...this a hot topic now in physics/biophysics and you will find a lot of debate about it.
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