Maxwell’s Demon

Maxwell’s demon is meant to support the possibility

of disobeying the second law of thermodynamics.

The second law focuses on two bodies with different

temperature which when collided and isolated will

result to a thermal equilibrium

or having those two bodies

almost the same temperature.

He thinks of two containers

with molecules of the same

gas at equal temperature and

where near to each other. An imaginary demon is

on the boundary of the two

http://cam.qubit.org/articles/intros/com
groups guarding a trapdoor. In reality, entropy

should not decrease in an isolated system. But on

Maxwell’s thoughts, the demon will open the door if

a faster than normal molecule moves near the door

letting that molecule to enter from container A to

container B. This will result to a change in the

average movement of electrons on both containers.

Container A will have descended in its temperature

while container B will have an increase on

temperature. This contradicts the definition of

entropy which is the second law of

thermodynamics. Entropy is defined as the amount

of thermal energy not available to do work. Since no

work has done to transfer that excited molecule,

only the demon had made a way to do that. Since

the demon and the gas are interacting, we must

consider the total entropy of the gas and the demon

combined. The expenditure of energy by the demon

will cause an increase in the entropy of the demon,

which will be larger than the lowering of the entropy

of the gas. For example, if the demon is checking

molecular positions using a flashlight, the flashlight

battery is a low-entropy device, a chemical reaction

waiting to happen.

-http:
//www.auburn.edu/~smith01/notes/maxde
m.htm

Johnny Sausa, four calcium