NATS 1760 Chapter Notes -Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, Irreversible Process, Distillation
20 Jun 2013
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Document Summary
A call for a green revolution, a new world order of clean tech that shall bring us into energy independence - it is essential for two reasons: economic advance in the developing world, advent of dangerous climate change. Energy use is what binds us most immediately to the world around us, to our style of living, and to each other as well. Scientifically, energy is defined as the capacity to do work (work= force x distance) The three laws of thermodynamics: you can t get something for nothing. Energy can be transferred from one system to another but never created or destroyed; it is always conserved: you can t break even. Energy transfer is an irreversible process and always involved some losses, expressed by an increase in the disorder, or entropy of a system: you can t get out of the game. There is such a thing as absolute zero, where all atomic movement ceases, but it s unattainable.
