How Harmful Is the First Law?

Job, Georg; Lankau, Timm

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2003.tb06096.x

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…It follows that enunciating the first law of thermodynamics as E int = q + w, where E int is a total internal energy, q heat and w mechanical work is evil science. 19 Adding two quantities measured with the same physical unit (joule) but of different nature explains why thermodynamic structure appears strange and confusing relative to other fields of physics, where such an error is never made. It is thus time to dive into quantum theory, a science where, contrary to thermodynamics, energy has a clear definition, as being the eigenvalue of an ab initio Hamiltonian operator acting on a Hilbert's space spanned by the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian operator (Heisenberg's representation).…”

Section: Energy and Spinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermodynamics of Life

Henry

2021

Substantia

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Biology is currently plagued by several fossil concepts that may be responsible for the current stagnation in medicine. Through a careful screening of the origins of thermodynamics, such fossils concepts have been identified: assumption that heat is a form of energy, assimilation of entropy to disorder, assimilation of death to states of maximum entropy, assimilation of ATP to the energy currency of living cells, non-recognition of entropy as a state function of the whole universe, belief that free energies are another kind of energy, self-referencing in the definition of life, ignorance of basic principles of quantum physics and more particularly of the importance of intrinsic spin, confusion between three different forms of reversibility, non-recognition that irreversibility is at the heart of living systems. After stowing of these concepts in the cabinet of useless and nasty notions, a fresh new look is proposed showing how life is deep-rooted trough the entropy concept in quantum physics on the one hand and in cosmology on the other hand. This suggests that life is not an emergent property of matter, but rather that it has always been a fundamental property of a universe filled with particles and fields. It is further proposed to dismiss the first (energy = heat + work) and third laws (entropy decreases to zero at zero Kelvin) of thermodynamics, retaining only the clear Boltzmann's definition of entropy in terms of multiplicity of microstates Ω, S = kB×Ln Ω, and the second law in its most general form applicable to any kind of macrostates: ∆Suniv ≥ 0. On this ground, clear definitions are proposed for life/death, healthiness/illness and for thermodynamic coupling. The whole unfolding of life in the universe: Big Bang → Light → Hydrogen → Stars → Atoms → Water → Planets → Metabolism → Lipids → RNA's → Viruses → Ribosome → Proteins → Bacteria → Eukaryote → Sex → Plants → Animals → Humans → Computers → Internet, may then be interpreted as a simple consequence of a single principle: ∆Suniv ≥ 0. We thus strongly urge biologists and physicians to change and adapt their ideas and vocabulary to the proposed reformulation for a better understanding of what is life and as a consequence for better health for living beings.

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Section: Energy and Spinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermodynamics of Life

Henry

2021

Substantia

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“…Thus, the new insight was: Q is the quantity of heat that had been searched for for a long time; the nature of heat is energy; and heat is a particular kind of energy. The fact that neither W nor Q constituted the energy content of a system was, and still is, the cause of many misunderstandings and learning difficulties [19]. Now, the interpretation of δQ as heat was in contradiction with the old heat concept of Black and Carnot.…”

Section: Joule Mayer Helmholtz-heat Becomes Energymentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Physical Quantity Deserves the Name “Quantity of Heat”?

Herrmann

Pohlig

2021

Entropy

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“What is heat?” was the title of a 1954 article by Freeman J. Dyson, published in Scientific American. Apparently, it was appropriate to ask this question at that time. The answer is given in the very first sentence of the article: heat is disordered energy. We will ask the same question again, but with a different expectation for its answer. Let us imagine that all the thermodynamic knowledge is already available: both the theory of phenomenological thermodynamics and that of statistical thermodynamics, including quantum statistics, but that the term “heat” has not yet been attributed to any of the variables of the theory. With the question “What is heat?” we now mean: which of the physical quantities deserves this name? There are several candidates: the quantities Q, H, Etherm and S. We can then formulate a desideratum, or a profile: What properties should such a measure of the quantity or amount of heat ideally have? Then, we evaluate all the candidates for their suitability. It turns out that the winner is the quantity S, which we know by the name of entropy. In the second part of the paper, we examine why entropy has not succeeded in establishing itself as a measure for the amount of heat, and we show that there is a real chance today to make up for what was missed.

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“…However, as we are convinced, just this unjustified extrapolation of laws of classical thermodynamics, together with spectacularly contradicting consequences, have revealed their weakness and principal inconsistency. In this context, the concept of heat and especially the First law of thermodynamics, being probably the most harmful statement in thermal physics , must be revised. Of course, it is generally believed and many main‐stream authors claim that the First law of thermodynamics is nothing but the formulation of the general principle of conservation of energy, thermal phenomena including, i.e.…”

Section: The Original Sin Of Thermodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On relativistic transformation of temperature

Mareš

Hubík

Špička

2017

Fortschritte der Physik

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The subject of this paper is the long‐lasting controversy on the relativistic transformation of temperature, generally known as the Planck‐Ott imbroglio. Various, mostly unsuccessful, attempts to solve this demanding problem using a combinations of tools of classical thermodynamics, transformation rules of special theory of relativity, theory of black‐body radiation and kinetic theory, are reviewed. Using phenomenological analysis, we demonstrate that the failure of these attempts and the existence of the imbroglio itself are most likely due to the misunderstanding of the physical meaning of temperature and to some serious flaws in foundations of classical thermodynamics. We further show that the temperature of a moving body must remain invariant for observers in all relatively moving frames.

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How Harmful Is the First Law?

Cited by 18 publications

References 2 publications

Thermodynamics of Life

Thermodynamics of Life

Which Physical Quantity Deserves the Name “Quantity of Heat”?

On relativistic transformation of temperature

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