I was trying to explain this to my sister – or at least, the concept that everything is finite (we have *very* strange conversations), but I cannot explain it to save my life. What’s a good way of explaining entropy and the basics of thermodynamics to a layperson?
In: Physics
You need a temperature difference to get any work out of it. We can generate electricity heat when we burn stuff because it is warmer than the colder environment around it.
Heat water to 150C and you can get steam you can use because room temperature is around 20C. But room temperature is if you measure in absolute temperature around 300K (kelvin) and 150C water is 423K. We cant use the 300K water to get any useful energy unless we have something a lot colder.
The heat death is when every part of the universe has reached the same temperature. If you just leave to object att a different temperature in contact the warmer will transfer energy to the cooler and the temperature of both will end somewhere in between the starting temperatures. This will happen to all of the universe in the future.
I would ignore entropy completely.
I would say that you can only burn gasoline once. Only heat generation is 100% efficient, if you use it to run a car or something else there is always losses mainly as heat.
You could make gasoline again from the combustion process. At best it requires the same energy as you get out from burning it. But because not process is 100% efficient you spend more energy the you get out.
This also applies to everything else like nuclear fusion in stars
The observable universe is finite in size and amount of matter. So any process we have to get any useful energy out is limited by the amount of matter in the universe and it is limtied.
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