No Free Lunch: the
Second Law
of Thermodynamics
Why is it easier to
mess up
your bedroom than to make it tidy?
Why does a warm cup of tea cool off in your living room?
Why doesn't a
500-calorie
cheeseburger you've eaten turn into 500 calories of you? These examples
reflect
one of the fundamental
laws of nature: the second law of thermodynamics. In this course students will learn
about this most important of laws with hands-on
experiments in the laboratory using physical and biological
systems. We will design our experiments,
make
predictions, carry out the
experiments, and analyze our results.
An understanding of this law has implications for our own
personal
behavior, the behavior
of our society, and the behavior of our species.