Science Forums - Physics and Mathematics

Violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy

googlesironman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:45:47 GMT

My first post in any forum...so please excuse and correct me if this is not the place for it.

Please see this video at YouTube...

YouTube - FUELLESS HEATER NO FUEL NO GAS NO WOOD...

Its quite clear what is happening but I cannot figure out what is wrong - Conservation of Energy cannot be violated and yet, unless the video is a fake, I see something my brain tells me should not be possible.

Please comment on this.

What is Entropy?

coldcreation — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:33:03 GMT

What is Entropy?

This question appears to surface quite often in various forms and in various places: always energizing considerable debate.

Here, it is stated: The equation for entropy, or the amount of disorder in a system, was formulated by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius in 1850.

Some would define entropy as a thermodynamic property, a measure (or degree) of disorder in a system. Entropy is a property defined for all states of a system. It can be assigned absolute values that must be positive (nonnegative). Entropy cannot be destroyed. It is a property of all matter. Depending on the type of system, entropy either remains the same or increases with time. In Greek, entropy means evolution. (see Second law of thermodynamics, and/or Entropy)

So far so good. But it is not at all that clear as to what exactly is entropy, especially to those unfamiliar with thermodynamics (which includes almost everyone :)). Frankly, even those that are familiar with thermodynamics seem to disagree on the question of what is entropy.

Here are some thoughts and questions that may arise on the topic of entropy:

What role does entropy play in the evolution of open thermodynamic system?

The entropy problem: Entropy is a thermodynamic quality of matter, defined by the degree of disorder (randomness) of a system. It is known to increase with time. When applied to the universe as a whole, the entropy should have been very low to begin with, and increased with time. By deduction, the universe must have been a very ordered system in its very early stages. Why? Entropy is essentially a conserved quantity in an expanding universe. The conclusion must be that the entropy of the universe has always been huge. The standard models do not explain why (Pagels 1985).

Entropy seems related to irreversibility.

The problem of irreversibility relates to the very foundation of thermodynamic systems in the evolutionary description of nature connected with the increase of entropy with time, a phenomenon described by the second law of thermodynamics.

Has the problem of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes been resolved?

What is the state of least entropy, i,e., is there an absolute minimum amount (like absolute zero Kelvin) of entropy of a system?

What’s do you believe entropy is (or is not) and why?

Coldcreation

Moldulo and Integer Division

Theory5 — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:47:13 GMT

I have a final coming up in CSIS (Problem solving). Its a programming course but network engineers have to take it for some reason as well. They talk about different ways to find problems and we use psudo code and flow charts. Anyways there are two different types of math, one is call modulo division and Integer division. I suck at math and on every test we've had I got these problems wrong. Is there a way to do this with my calculator? I have a graphing calcuator, a TI-84 Plus, and I haven't been able to find a program for it or an easier way to do modulo and integer division.

The Equivalence Principle...

Boerseun — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:22:04 GMT

You're stuck in a room with no windows.

Are you in an accelerating rocket, rocketing off at 1g, or are you in a room on earth, experiencing earth's gravitational pull?

According to the Equivalence Principle, there is no way to tell the difference.

There's a problem with this:

If you've got some tools and instruments with you, you can clearly tell the difference, because the gravitational pull should be bigger on the room's floor than on the ceiling. If you're stuck in a rocket, the 1g acceleration will be the same all over the room.
Because gravity is inverse square, and accelerating a body uniformly will make for a uniform experience of 1g, there can be no comparison.

The example of the 1g accelerating rocket/room on earth makes sense on an intuitive level because we can easily picture it, but on a fundamental level it does not hold.

Am I missing something here? Will spatial contraction in the direction of travel make for a different g-reading at the floor and the ceiling of an accelerating spaceship? If so, it should be measurable to exactly counter the difference in gravity felt at the height of the ceiling compared to the floor for the room on earth, and also at an inverse square rate.

If not, the Equivalence Principle will not hold even for atoms, because the top and bottom of atoms will measure gravity differently (minuscule, but still...)

So does it hold only for imaginary point-particles?

gravitational hope

Luke — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:34:45 GMT

so i wanted to know what gravity was. nothing really came up that i could get suckered into believing, so i deceided to try make my own little theory.

im busy studying newton's laws in physics and the one thing that seems clear is that the fundamental law of the universe is that no object will move or stop moving without a force being applied to it. For instance centrifugal force doesnt really seem like much of a force to me, its just a result of an object wanting to move in a straightline, we've just called it a force because its results look like a force. so from this i thought that, okay every "force" is just a result of the fundamental law.

So now i wanted to use only this principle to discover a reason for the illusion of gravity, so i am going to propose that every atom( well actually everything, electrons, strings, quacs, not sure how you spell that one) in the universe was expanding exponetially.

My wording has been terrible, im sorry, so let me give an exapmple of what im trying to say.
Imagine the earth. Every atom of the earth is expanding, and because the earth is made up of so many atoms the earth is expanding faster than objects with fewer atoms ( this is why objects with a greater mass would have a greater gravitational pull). So you imagine the earth expanding exponentially( exponentially because if it was a constant speed then the objects would not be "pushed" onto the earths surface.

there are probably many flaws in this theory. one that seems immediately apparent is, " like hello dude! then howcome the earth hasnt become noticable huger with this exponential "growth" ". My answer is that everyting around is also expanding hence the tools made for measuring the earth are also getting bigger as well as our eyes and what not. Everything else expanding on earth also adds to its gravtional pull because according to this silly theory they too are expanding and "getting" closer to earth.

God i hate to post something that is so poorly worded, but anyway purlease read this and accept that it is nonsense but tell me why( we all accept the silly fact that time is relative so give this a try. i want to argue.

Cantor's Diagonal Slash Disproved

137 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:35:05 GMT

Cantor's diagonal argument, also called the diagonalisation argument, the diagonal slash argument or the diagonal method, was published in 1891 by Georg Cantor as a proof that there are infinite sets which cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with the infinite set of natural numbers.

However I have been able to visually disprove Cantor's Diagonal argument simply by reordering the sequence .. like such below...

As you can clearly see, in such a sequence every Natural number is listed (& in order) and will eventually get enumerated, corresponding one-to-one to all natural numbers.

By listing it this way, I can now show that I can draw a diagonal slash from upper left corner to the lower right corner and this slash contains a infinite number of "0"..

X= 000000000000....

Therefore it goes to show and follows from the above that by changing "any" and "every" nth digit of X I am able to make it "fit" any of the horizontal sequence of elements!!!

In general, for since I am able to order it in such a way that I can show that the progression of the natural numbers is "slow" enough that it never has a chance to catch up to the "diagonal", then effective at each and every sequence level "X" can be manipulated to be exactly that sequence!

Therefore Cantor's Diagonal Slash has been disproved.

Happy Halloween

update:

for further clarification look at this new graph I posted..

Essentially for / at every nth digit level of X, (say if X is only 2 digits) there is NO possible combination of X that
anyone could possibly come up with that isn't contained in the sequences demarcated by the red rectangle,
same is true for when x is at three digits, four digits, for any number of digits of X (indeed for any value, discrete or 'real') of
X, there is already EVERY possible combination of that X enumerated one by one according to the natural numbers already belonging in that list! As you can see, it is not possible to come up with any sequence of numbers no matter how "picky" you are that isn't already in the list!

Therefore again Cantor's Diagonal Slash is disproved.

Boring you again; geometry.....

Ben — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:30:04 GMT

Some of you may find this thread unbelievably patronizing. If you do, I apologize. All of you will be wondering WTF has this to do with geometry.

Hmm, forgotten for now; but it will come to me.........

Second I shall be talking a lot about dimensions. In this context, I will say exactly what I mean, but will usually suppress the word "dimensional". Thus, I will say that an n-dimensional space is an n-space. OK with you?

Third, this is, as far as I can judge, the way mathematicians look at this subject. So, let's get to work.........

Consider a line of finite length, as lines are usually understood. We will assume that this line can be infinitely sub-divided. Then we will assume that each element in this this sub-division corresponds to a real number. Thus our line is a "segment" of the real line

We now ask, how many real numbers do I need to uniquely identify a point on this line? The answer is, of course 1. Let us call this line as 1-dimensional, by virtue of this fact. Let's take our line segment, and join it head-to-tail. We instantly recognize this as a circle.

Obviously, the same applies; any point on this circle can be uniquely described by a single real element, and accordingly I will call this geometric object as 1-dimensional.

Mathmen use the symbol for this character, and call it the 1-sphere. Now let's try and think about the "2-dimensional line", or 2-line. What can this mean (if anything)?

Well, using the above, we may assume that this is the "line" that requires two numbers to uniquely describe a point. From which we infer that the "2-line" is the plane. We may also infer, from the above, that the 2-sphere is, in some abstract sense, a head-to-tail "joining" of a part of this plane. The implications here are profound......

The 2-sphere is merely some sort of jazzed up plane, that is, it knows nothing about the area/volume it may or may not enclose. The same applies to any n-sphere.

With a grinding of gears, let's now consider the area enclosed by the 1-sphere as defined above. Intuition tells us, in this case quite correctly, that it is part of the "2-line" i.e the plane. This part of the plane is usually referred to as the "disk" . It is, in fact, the 2-ball.

Similarly, the "area" enclosed by the 2-sphere is a part of the 3-plane and so on. Obviously, this latter "area" is the volume enclosed by the 2-sphere, from which we conclude that, provided we are allowed to think of area as a 2-volume, then, as a generalization, the n-sphere encloses an n + 1 volume.

But the next thing we have to think about, as we're in the mood, is whether or not, for any "n-volume", I need to have an enclosing n - 1 space.

Well, it largely a matter of definition; as a geometric object, the n + 1 volume enclosed by the n-sphere may or may not include the n-sphere. If it does, one says that the n + 1 ball is closed. Otherwise, they say that the n + 1 ball is open.

Intuition says exactly this; a set is closed iff it includes its boundary, it is open otherwise (note bene; this is not the topologist's definition)

So the boundary of an n-ball is precisely the n - 1 sphere that encloses it.

BB Again

Little Bang — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:55:25 GMT

I've asked this question before, of what was the BB composed?