Weirdest post ever

Tuesday January 10, 2006 - 2:29AM EDT

I was just lying in bed awake as usual and thinking about various things.  I started thinking about The Simpsons episode where the school teachers go on strike and Lisa makes a perpetual motion machine.  I remember somone mentioning that those things don't work becaue of friction.  Then I remember was homer said when Lisa showed him the machine.  He scolded her and said in this house we follow the laws of thermodynamics.  I thought I understood that line because it had to do with fricition.  But not until that moment a I was just lying in bed did I really understand it. Funny part about it is that I had all the seperate understanding I just never put it together until now.  The scolding by Homer has to do with entropy in a system. Specifically a thermodynamic system.  Thermodynamics says that entropy is the tendency of a system to reach a balance in which there is no more usable heat energy in the system.  In other words a closed thermodynamic system will reach a point in which there is no heat that can be used to do work.  The perpetual motion machine is impossible in a closed thermodynamic system because  friction is  heat energy that can't be used to do work, however for the machine to work that heat energy would have to be usable.  So it violates thermodynamics, perpetual motion machines are impossible in a thermodynamic system because of friction. You either have to have no friction or friction has to do work.  Friction doesn't do work, if it did than thermodynamics would break down.  But it doesn't do work so thermodynamics hold up.  Hold up in the classical sense.  Quantum mechanics are a whole different story.