Or, even more simply, _experiment_ with macro size bouncing balls and a macro size multiple pawl ratchet wheel, and shake the solidarized boxes randomly to see if you can get the axle between the two boxes to rotate consistently in the right direction.
This should give a correct yes/no qualitative result shouldn't it? Michel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michel Jullian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 7:03 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]: multiple pawl rotational rectification > At first sight multiple pawls would seem to go around the "bug" in feynmann's > original ratchet indeed, but it remains to be verified (a simple 80's video > game like 2D simulation with classical bouncing balls in the two boxes might > do the trick). > > Michel > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 3:49 PM > Subject: Re: [Vo]: multiple pawl rotational rectification > > >> >> >> Charles M. Brown wrote: >>> Feynman's ratchet used one sprung pawl on a ratchet wheel. The spring >>> biases the pawl towards the ratchet wheel so mechanical pressure on the >>> gentle slope of the ratchet wheel drives the wheel the wrong way where >>> it can rest against the sharp or even overhanging slope. If the pawl is >>> then lifted by Brownian motion and the ratchet wheel moves a little the >>> wrong way when the pawl is high, possible 50% of the time, than the >>> wheel will rotate the wrong way. If the ratchet wheel moves a little the >>> right way when the pawl is high, possible 50% of the time, then the >>> pawl will return to a low part of the gentle slope near the sharp slope. >>> If there are many pawls on one ratchet wheel than they do not have to be >>> biased by springs because the probability is high, and increases >>> exponentially with the number of pawls, that at least one pawl of a >>> similar position group will be in position to block counter rotation of >>> the ratchet wheel. This type of system should behave like a larger scale >>> mechanically rectified ratchet wheel at thermal power levels. >>> >>> I don't think Feynman tried hard enough to break the Second Law. >>> Fabricating a device that fails with inadequate design doesn't prove >>> that a better design won't work. >> >> Indeed, you can't prove a theorem with examples, no matter how many >> examples you have; using an example can only serve to disprove it (if >> the example happens to violate it). >> >> One of my big flops in school was thermo -- I dropped the course at the >> point where the textbook presented a "proof" of something or other which >> I simply could not follow. As far as I could see the proof didn't prove >> anything -- and when I asked about it during the next lecture, well, >> that's when I found out the professor was /deaf/. There I was, sitting >> in the hall, in a front row seat, with the prof struggling to hear my >> question -- he walked over to stand right in front of my chair with his >> hand cupped around his ear and had me repeat it, really loud, for about >> the fourth time -- with 200 other students sitting in stunned silence in >> back of me. Finally the prof went back up to the board and answered the >> wrong question 'cause he never had managed to hear what I was asking. >> >> And so I filled out a drop slip and sold the textbook and never did >> really learn the subject, beyond Feynman's brief treatment in his >> physics lectures. >> >> >>> Classical treatment of Feynman's ratchet: >>> >>> http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Groups/parrondo/ratchet.html >>> >>> Aloha, >>> >>> Charlie >>> >> >
