On Jan 26, 11:11 pm, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/26/2012 5:03 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > >>> Ok, so how does it effect the entropy of the structures? The red > >>> house, the white house, and the mixed house (even if an interesting > >>> pattern is made in the bricks), all behave in a physically identical > >>> way, do they not? > >> No they don't. They reflect photons differently; which is why you could > >> use the pattern > >> to send a message. > > True, although it's only relevant if you have photons to reflect. If I > > turn out the lights (completely) does that change the entropy of the > > red house? What if I turn the lights back on, has entropy been > > suddenly reduced? Would a brighter light put more information or less > > entropy onto the white house than the red house, ie, does the pattern > > cost something in photons? > > Yes.
That doesn't make sense to me. I think if two houses had two different patterns with the same numbers of each brick, neither one could possibly have a different cost in photons than the other. In a house of four bricks, Red Red White White cannot have a different photon absorption than Red White White Red. > > > > > I'm just curious, not trying to argue with you about it. On a similar > > note, I was wondering about heat loss in a vacuum today. With the > > second law of thermodynamics, it seems like heat could only dissipate > > by heating something else up. If there was nothing in the universe > > except a blob of molten nickel, would it cool off over time in an > > infinite vacuum? It seems like it wouldn't. It seems like you would > > need some other matter at a different temperature to seek a common > > equilibrium with. Or is the heat just lost over time no matter what? > > The heat would be lost by infrared radiation. Lost to where? Energy is neither created nor...lost. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
