What if Energy Flowed from Cold to Hot? Counterfactual Thought Experiments

• Harvey S. Leff ^[1] ; Richard Kaufman ^[2]
  1. [1] California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

     California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

     Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] University of Massachusetts Lowell

     University of Massachusetts Lowell

     City of Lowell, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 58, Nº. 7, 2020, págs. 491-493
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • What if energy flowed from cold to hot regions? How would thermodynamics be different? We examine such an imagined cold-to-hot world, abbreviated here as a C2H world, and show that the unfamiliar direction of energy flow implies that two thermally interacting objects at different temperatures will not equilibrate. We find that there is no operational definition of temperature, and the first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics become meaningless.