williams@kirk.DEC (John Williams 223-3402) (05/09/85)
Unidirectional Heat Transfer
If you, let's say, used cold as a means of integrated
measurement, you would find that cold transfers to hot objects
according to all the same laws that govern heat being transferred
to cool objects, only reversed. The heat coordinate analysis is
simply a convenient tool, and is in actuality just a standard
convention for solving thermodynamic problems.
Heat is simply a means of expressing the motion of
molecules, etc., within a confined region. This motion is
conserved, but distributed throughout the medium, statistically,
with an exponential decay. Some is lost, however, to the
environment.
This is not to say that the laws of conservation are
invalid, just simply that conservation extends out into the
environment, not necessarily the " closed " system you had in
mind. Energy is transferred bidirectionally, but, the only
difference you are able to measure is the complete result, which
statistically transfers more energy to the cold object from the
hot object than vice-versa.
John Williams
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