Saturday, November 25, 2006

Entropy Trap

Industrialization, Population explosion, Advanced technology, Computerization, Information boom, Life in the fast lane, popping the pills, genetic engineering, globalization, human genome project, nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, Pesticides, Fertilizers, Deforestation, Urbanization, Global warming …………………………………The list can go on.

What’s all this got to do with second law of thermodynamics?
Did I say thermodynamics?
O! Yes, to be more precise, I said second law of thermodynamics, which naturally comes after first law of thermodynamics.
And what’s this first law?
well! The FIRST LAW says that Energy can neither be created nor can it be destroyed, however one form of energy can be converted into another form, like burning of coal into electricity or nuclear energy into electricity.
But that’s cool! One would say,
Ya! that’s cool till one stops and ponders on the second law of thermodynamics.

The SECOND LAW states that whenever one form of energy is converted into another form, some of the energy is always lost in the form of unusable heat energy during the transformation, Physicist use the term ENTROPY to describe this phenomenon. That’s still cool man! , Wait there’s more
Faster the rate of transformation higher is the loss
Complex systems transform large amount of energy at faster rate and hence loose a lot of available energy in the process
More exacting the process higher is the loss
High end technology aims at faster processing and it ‘s complexity is of highest order and hence ultimately it looses lot of energy
Blah blah blah ………………………………….
.
Do you get my point?

uummm … mmm no not exactly!

OK! Then you must really think HARDER ……………… think FASTER ………………………. think DEEPER ……………… come on think!!! use all the power of your grey matter.

Ohhhhh….h stop! I am feeling exhausted!

Ahhhhh ……. Ha Reallllly!

1 comment:

thelaukik said...

Agreed! BTW if you read Marathi, there is a person called Dileep Kulkarni, who is into sustainable development. He publishes a periodical called 'Gatimaan Santulan' Check it out. There are also other acclaimed books of his 'Nisargayan' & 'Dainandin Paryaveran'.