Pulling Energy Out Of Thin Air

we live in a universe of continuous motion from atoms to massive galactic structures that span millions of light years energy permeates existence for millennia philosophers of nature have ruminated on methods to extract work from this abundance of energy during the middle ages the concept of the perpetual motion machine would develop it's based on the idea of motion that would continue forever without an energy source hundreds of attempts to construct such a device would occur over the next few centuries with no definitive success among them scholars of the time were uncertain if such a device would even be possible however as humanity progressed into the age of enlightenment and the subsequent industrial era a better understanding of the characteristics of energy would form and in the second half of the 19th century this would coalesce into the laws of thermodynamics of these the first law known as the conservation of energy would prohibit the existence of perpetual motion machines by preventing the creation or destruction of energy within an isolated system despite this the chase of perpetual motion did not end but rather shifted in its goal during this period new ideas for extracting free mechanical work that would not violate the conservation of energy would develop these are categorized as perpetual motion machines of the second kind and they aimed to convert the inherent thermal energy of a system into mechanical work this video is made possible by brilliant do you ever get so fascinated by learning a new idea that it sends you down a rabbit hole of discovery that genuinely excites you but then you hit a wall of understanding and you simply can't absorb the nuance or elegance of what you're after because you're missing a link of knowledge with brilliant you can keep the journey going brilliant allows you to build your problem-solving and critical thinking abilities by making it easy to strengthen your base of knowledge and understanding brilliant offers a huge array of interactive lessons on a broad range of math science and computer science topics and unlike traditional courses you learn efficiently by working on problems and solving puzzles you don't even need to be an expert to understand the lessons it's made for all levels of knowledge in the production of this video for example i find myself referring to several brilliant lessons on classical mechanics and energy to reaffirm my understanding of ideas i encountered during my research with brilliant you learn in depth and at your own pace brilliant is offering a 20 discount for the first 200 people that sign up using this link just go to brilliant.org backslash new mind the link is in the description below in a traditional heat engine a working substance such as a gas is brought from a higher temperature state to a lower one in this process some of the thermal energy is converted into mechanical work by exploiting the physical properties of the working substance such as through expansion or flow however perpetual motion machines of the second kind attempt to operate on a single heat reservoir without a transfer of heat into a cooler sink in concept this body of heat is cooled spontaneously extracting mechanical work from it in 1867 james clark maxwell the scottish pioneer of electromagnetism conceived of a thermodynamic thought experiment that exhibited a key characteristic of a thermal perpetual motion machine in his thought experiment maxwell described a finite being that controls a small door between two compartments of gas as individual gas molecules approach the door the being quickly opens and shuts the door so that only fast molecules are passed into one of the chambers while only slow molecules are passed into the other because faster molecules are hotter the being's actions causes one chamber to warm up and the other to cool down seemingly reversing the process of a heat engine without adding energy physicist sir willian thompson lord kelvin would coined the phrase maxwell's demon giving the agent at the heart of this experiment an unintended negative connotation despite maintaining the conservation of energy both maxwell's demon and thermal perpetual motion machines in general contravened arguably one of the most unrelenting principles of thermodynamics entropy the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the entropy of an isolated system left to evolve naturally can never decrease and will always arrive at a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where entropy is the highest without a difference in thermal states to establish a flow of energy no mechanical work can be extracted from the system in effect as entropy increases the amount of energy that can be extracted decreases this inherent natural progression of entropy towards thermal equilibrium directly contradicts the behavior of all perpetual motion machines of the second kind it implies that for any of these devices to operate as described they must reduce the entropy of the system for the second law of thermodynamics to be upheld a source of energy is required for this process in the case of maxwell's daemon this reduction of entropy is accomplished by the agent's actions which implicitly requires energy external of the system that is introduced via the demon in 1827 scottish botanist robert brown while studying the fertilization of flowering plants began to investigate a persistent rapid oscillatory motion of microscopic particles that were ejected by pollen grains suspended in water curious as to the cause of this phenomenon he then examined long dead pollen grains as well as chips of granite and particles of smoke brown had ruled out the vitality of life as the source of the jittering called brownie in motion this phenomenon was initially attributed to thermal convection currents within the fluid however this would soon be abandoned as it was observed that nearby particles exhibited uncorrelated motion furthermore the motion was seemingly random and occurred in any direction even more puzzling was that year-long experiments had shown that this movement never stops more systematic investigations conducted at the end of the 19th century determined that brownian motion got faster as particle size shrunk and the viscosity of the surrounding fluid was lowered raising the temperature of the fluid also had the same effect from these observations it was theorized that the source of this phenomenon was the thermal molecular motion in the liquid environment this motion was being imparted to larger particles that could be observed under a microscope this would be the first directly observable effect that would corroborate the kinetic theory of gases that the temperature of a substance is proportional to the average kinetic energy with which the molecules of the substance are vibrating [Music] these conclusions had led albert einstein in 1905 to produce his own quantitative theory of brownian motion and within his work brownian motion had indirectly confirmed the existence of atoms of a definite size brownian motion would tie the concepts of thermodynamics to the macroscopic world its expression of entropy would be found in diffusion where over a period of time particles will tend to spread evenly through the medium beyond fluids this phenomenon was observed in various other physical systems such as the movement of stars within galaxies the diffusion of positive holes through a semiconductor and even the movement of calcium through bone tissue in living organisms with brown in motion not connecting the easily visible macroscopic world to thermodynamics maxwell's demon would be revisited with a new philosophical perpetual motion apparatus in 1900 gabriel lipman inventor of the first color photography method proposed an idea for a mechanical thermal perpetual motion machine known as the brownian ratchet in a brownian ratchet a paddle wheel is immersed in a fluid at a single temperature state the device is imagined to be small enough so that an impulse from a single molecular collision caused by random brownian motion can turn the paddle while statistically these collisions would rotate the paddle in either direction with equal probability the paddle is attached to a ratcheting mechanism that rotates freely in one direction but prevents counter rotating by a pawl the net effect from the persistent random collisions would seemingly result in a continuous rotation of the ratchet mechanism in one direction effectively allowing mechanical work to be extracted from brownian motion while the brownian ratchet like all other thermal perpetual motion machines before it directly violates the second law of thermodynamics it would not be until 1912 for the polish physicist marion smolchowski to give the first correct qualitative explanation of why the device fails according to smallchowski if the entire apparatus is at the same temperature the pawl will also undergo brownian motion bouncing up and down it will fail intermittently by allowing a ratchet tooth to slip backwards under the pawl while it is up instead of the ratchet rotating continuously in one direction it will move randomly back and forth and therefore will not produce any useful work in 1962 american physicist richard feyman would popularize the brownian ratchet with his own quantitative analysis of the device reaffirming small chowski's conclusions the attention brought to the idea by both physicists led to coining the famous molotowski ratchet as an alternative name to the device during the 1990s using brownian motion to extract mechanical work would re-emerge in the field of brownian motor research brownian motors are nano machines that can extract useful work from chemical potentials and other microscopic non-equilibrium sources they're abundant in the protein-based cellular machinery of living organisms and fully comply with the laws of thermodynamics in recent years they've become a focal point of nanoscience research especially for directed motion applications within nanorobotics attempts at exploiting brownian motion as an energy source were not limited to mechanical apparatuses in 1950 french physicist leon brilwin proposed an easily constructable electrical circuit analog to the brownian ratchet all electrical conductors experienced thermal agitation of the charge carriers within them known as johnson nyquist noise this thermal noise occurs regardless of any applied voltage it's present in all electrical circuits and in particularly sensitive electronic equipment it can drown out weak signals becoming a limiting factor in their sensitivity in his paper on the idea brilliant described using a diode to rectify the thermal noise current fluctuations produced by resistor at thermal equilibrium much like the ratchet and pull mechanism of the brownian ratchet the diode would in concept create a one-way flow of energy producing a direct current which could be used to perform work however much like the brownian ratchet the one-way mechanism once again fails when the entire device is at thermal equilibrium within the analysis done by berlin it was shown that at equilibrium the thermal fluctuations within the diode generate an electromotive force that cancels the voltage from the rectified current fluctuations producing no useful energy even within the realm of electrical force entropy and the second loft thermodynamics would not be defeated in early 2020 a team of physicists at the university of arkansas would make a breakthrough in harvesting the energy of brownian motion and unlike unsuccessful hypothetical approaches of the past their experiment yielded both physically measurable evidence and did not violate the laws of thermodynamics instead of attempting to extract energy from a fluid the team exploited the properties of a micro-sized sheet of freestanding graphene graphene is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice at room temperature graphene is in constant motion the individual atoms within the membrane exhibit brownian motion even in the presence of an applied bias voltage the team created a circuit that used two diodes to capture energy from charge flow created by the graphene's motion in order to achieve the exceptionally low mechanical and electrical noise required for the experiment it was done within a scanning tunnel microscope chamber that rests on an active noise cancelling vibration isolation system and it was also powered using a battery bank with an isolated ground the entire circuit is brought to thermal equilibrium and a bias voltage is applied stretching the graphene in this state the graphene begins to develop a low frequency oscillation that shifts the evenly distributed power spectrum of brownian motion to lower frequencies this oscillating charge is then rectified by the diodes in a pulsing direct current that is delivered to a load resistor the data produced from this experiment revealed an astonishing occurrence the diodes had actually amplified the power delivered rather than reduce it suggesting that electrical work was done by the motion of the graphene despite being held at a single temperature work was done while in thermodynamic equilibrium despite contradicting decades of philosophical analysis on extracting energy from thin air the team behind this experiment concluded that while the circuit is at thermal equilibrium the thermal exchange between the circuit and its surrounding environment is in fact powering the work on the load resistor with no daemon created the second law of thermodynamics remains intact the team behind the experiment have now set their sights on determining if the dc current produced can be stored in a capacitor as well as the feasibility of miniaturizing the circuit and patterning it to a silicon wafer if successful a large array of these circuits implemented on silicon could serve as a low power battery replacement graphene power generation could be incorporated into semiconductor products providing a clean limitless low voltage power source for small devices and sensors this video was made possible by brilliant be sure to check them out at brilliant.org backslash new mind or at the link in the description below [Music] [Music] you

Channel: New Mind

Views: 139,580

Rating: 4.8255219 out of 5

Keywords: perpetual motion machine, Brownian motion, entropy, perpetual motion, laws of thermodynamics, second law of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon, first law of thermodynamics, Brownian ratchet, Brownian motor, Feynman–Smoluchowski ratchet, richard feynman, graphene, thermal gradient, thermal power, graphene power

Id: UK8Fw5Zjna0

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021