I know every conversion of energy has loss, whether its heat, light, noise, etc. But why is there no way to combat it?
In: Physics
Thermodynamics are a discipline that deals with transfer of energy. Whenever you transfer energy from one object to another, there’s a tiny bit that’s lost as heat. There’s not a strict reason that this *has* to happen, but we’ve observed it enough to know that it always happens at least a little for all the things we know how to use/do/make. Heat loss isn’t the on li y way you can lose energy, but it’s one that will always prevent you from 100% efficiency.
Efficiency is the measure of how much work actually gets done vs. how much you put in, so if you always lose even just a little bit as heat, you still won’t be 100% efficient.
Most of the time this heat loss isn’t the problem, and there are lots of things you can do to improve efficiency, but that’s a limit we don’t currently know how to overcome.
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