"One of the best established facts in thermodynamics is that it is impossible in a system enclosed in an envelope which permits neither change of volume nor passage of heat, and in which both the temperature and the pressure are every where the same, to produce any inequality of temperature or of pressure without the expenditure of work. This is the second law of thermodynamics, and it is undoubtedly true as long as we can deal with bodies only in mass, and have no power of perceiving or handling the separate molecules of which they are made up."
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Maxwell's demon
is an 1867 of James Clerk Maxwell suggesting how the second law of thermodynamics might hypothetically be violated. The description was contained in his Theory of Heat in 1871. As individual gas molecules approach a small hole, his demon quickly opens and shuts it to allow only fast molecules to passed from chamber A into chamber B, and only the slower particles to pass back from chamber B. This causes the the second chamber to warm and the original chamber to cool, even though the chambers are
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