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September 21, 2004
Stupid Science
No class today, and I don't have much to report. I got a lot of sleep last night, and woke up at 9:30 a.m.—almost unheard of for days when I can sleep as much as I want. I got up, ate breakfast, and continued listening to Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, which I started last night. The next thing I knew it was noon and I was still wandering around the apartment, washing dishes, and listening to the audiobook. Around 3 p.m. I finished the book. Having decided that I had wasted enough of my day, I settled down to read the next chapter of my coursebook—which was all about the science of sustainability.
Please note the following sentence, which is indicative of the entire 50 page chapter:
If a system and its surroundings taken together is an isolated system, the entropy change of the combined system is, of course, always positive or, in the limit, zero.
Well of course it is—any simpleton could understand that! Here's another one:
It is impossible for any system to operate in a thermodynamic cycle and deliver a net amount of energy by work to its surroundings while receiving energy by heat from a single thermal reservoir. (A thermal reservoir is an idealized system that is so "big" that it always as the same temperature and pressure although energy is added or removed.) It is easy to see that this statement implies, for example, that it is impossible to construct an engine that could propel a ship by extracting energy from the water of the oceans it crosses (which includes enormous amounts of energy). However, the statement doesn't rule out the possibility of actually extracting energy by work from a single reservoir—as long as the process is not a cycle. Neither does it rule out the possibility of a cycle to deliver energy by work from the surrounding to a single reservoir.
Huh?
I am experiencing growing frustration with the coursebook, which is of poor quality—both in content and in overall grammar/language. I've been talking to Jess about it and I think I will volunteer to help edit the coursebook for the next year. In fact, I think it would be helpful to completely eliminate the coursebook and just rely on the primary materials—like the 17 books listed on the program website. I ordered all of these books (at no insignificant price) and have been bored stiff reading them—because they so closely resemble information in the coursebook. In fact, large parts of our coursebook are lifted verbatim from the original texts (no doubt violating copyright laws—which seem to follow me from place to place), but have been carelessly compiled (or sometimes clumsily rewritten) so as to lose the clarity and conviction of the original works. Grr. I hate shoddy work.
So now I'm all fired up about the program, and am not looking forward to class tomorrow. Fortunately, I have the forethought to bring extra clothes to ward off the freezer-like temperatures of the lecture room. After class (which ends at noon, thank goodness) I'll come back and do a quick load of laundry (hopefully the dryer will continue to work this week) and go back down to campus for a bonfire to celebrate the autumnal equinox.
