Abstract
McCLARE1 has proposed a complicated new statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I wish to propose the following simple one: “The only processes that can happen spontaneously are those that can in principle be made to yield work, for example, to lift up a weight.” Although I know of nearly a dozen statements of this Law which distinguish with varying degrees of clarity and universality those processes that can happen spontaneously from those that cannot, I have not come across the statement proposed except in the restricted field of mechanics: perhaps something similar is implied in a footnote by Everett2.
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References
McClare, C. W. F., Nature, 240, 88 (1972).
Everett, D. H., Chemical Thermodynamics, 27 (Longman, London, 1971).
Hill, T. H., Thermodynamics of Small Systems (Benjamin, New York, 1963).
Bagshaw, C. R., and Trentham, D. R., Biochem. J. (in the press).
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WILKIE, D. Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nature 242, 606–607 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242606a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/242606a0
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