Megusic

You guys rock, thanks for your help I really need to bone up on this stuff but as a student I don't have much time or patience for extra reading...maybe if I weren't checking out IIDB so much...


As for Undercurrent's comment...

Exactly what I did at the moment, and what I tend to do in such situations, and I'm tired of it! This is a guy who has attended a Lutheran school his entire life, up until college. Every educator he has ever had up until now has taught him that his sect of religion and it's beliefs are the only right way to think. They were explicitly taught that if anyone believed differently, it was their duty to challenge them until they changed the person's mind. His remark, knowing that I am an atheist, was in his own passive way of telling me that he's right and that I am very wrong. This guy has never even been presented w/ an accurate theory of revolution, save for the paragraph in our freshman bio book. I'm definately not out to deconvert him, or anyone, but don't you think at some point someone should present these idea's to him, as he's been taught it's wrong for him to look into it himself?

Non-praying Mantis

Actually, the 2LoT applies to ALL systems, closed or open. However, in closed systems, the system must increase in entropy, because it has no energy input from its surroundings.

Open systems have energy inputs from their surroundings (the earth gets energy from the sun) and this allows for the system to lose entropy while the surroundings gain more entropy than the system loses. The 2LoT applies to both the system and the surroundings.

Just as small quibble

NPM

Jobar

A damn-fine question, Megusic, and one we face on a regular basis around II.

In your case, I'd say it all depends on how much you like him, or how much he irritates you. If you like him well enough to want to try to alleviate his ignorance, then yes, you should try to show him some of the things you've been told here. And if he irritates you enough, you should do it just to shut him up!

It takes time and effort to educate someone that has been raised up to cling to ignorance. You have to decide if it's worth your while.

HRG

Just an even smaller quibble:

energy input from the surroundings is not an requirement for losing entropy. Think of a hot rock in interstellar space which is radiating away its heat and thus loses entropy.

The solar spectrum is approximately thermal, thus the Earth gets entropy from the sun (at 6000° Kelvin). But it radiates much more to space (at 300° Kelvin). It is this difference on which most processes on Earth run (those which do not depend on radioactivity).

Regards,
HRG.

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks guys, quibbles, large or small, are always welcome! But I hope the bullet point still stands though, as a two-sentence bit-to-remember .

Cheers, DT

Selsaral

I'd ask the person how many classes in paleontology and geology they have taken. The evidence is completely overwhelming. The first one to really get into my head was during the first semester of invertebrate paleontology my professor spent a lot of time describing torsion in gastropods. Like others have said, if you really look into it and start learning the facts, it's undeniable.

Gracchus

Not so. It loses energy.

You seem to have confused entropy and energy. Imagine your hot brick in a cold room. No energy enters or leaves the room, which is to say it is a closed system. The brick will lose energy to the room, until it is the same temperature as the room. At this point the room-brick system has attained maximum entropy.

HRG

Of course it does; it loses heat. But every loss of heat is a loss of entropy. dS = delta-Q/T. As the rock cools, the number of microstates it can occupy in momentum space decreases.
The analogy to the Earth is the brick, not the union of brick and room. The room in your example would correspond to interstellar space.
True, but the entropy of the brick will have decreased.

In thermodynamics, one has always to be careful about what is the "system" and what are the "surroundings". And it is doubtful whether the universe as a whole can be regarded as a closed system, since its total energy and entropy may be undefined.

Regards,
HRG.

HRG

Just a micro-quibble:

Depends on what you call the 2LoT. Physicists would say that the general form of the 2LoT hold for any system, open or closed. If you require that no entropy is exchanged with the environment, then the special form for closed systems follows from the general form.

Just as electrostatics follows from electrodynamics by setting all time derivatives and currents to zero.

The consequences for the earth and evolution are identical:
the entropy of an open system can certainly decrease - by emitting entropy into the environment.


Regards,
HRG.

Oolon Colluphid

Okay, tell you what, Megusic: forget my above post. Before you dare contradict any 2LoT claim, you must have read, learned and inwardly digested all the TalkOrigins pages and links in their Thermodynamics, Evolution and Creationism section. And ideally have thoroughly reviewed Peter Atkins’s textbook The Second Law.



DT