Global Environmental Change Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Global Environmental Change - Assignment Example hauls it to a centralized facility where workers or a machinery separate the wastes for recycling may found in understanding the characteristics and application of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the entropy law. What is Entropy? Requadt defines to Entropy as the amount of energy that cannot be converted into mechanical work. (Requadt, 2010). The term entropy is a measure of the degree to which energy has lost the capacity to perform useful work. Energy quality: According to the first energy law, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, one might think there will always be enough energy. Yet when you fill a cars tank with gasoline and drive around something is lost. If it isnt energy, then, what is it? The second law of energy, also known as the second law of thermodynamics provides the answer to this question. Energy varies in its quality or ability to do useful work. For useful work to occur energy must move or flow from a level of high-quality (more concentrated) energy to a level of lower-quality (less concentrated) energy like manifestation of the Second Law can be stated quite simply: Heat always flows spontaneously from hot (high-quality energy) to cold (low-quality energy). Heat energy will not flow from a cooler to a warmer body. It would be foolish to try to warm our hands on a block of ice although there is considerable heat in the ice. If we compare the heat of ice with the heat of liquid hydrogen, ice would appear to be very hot, indeed. It would be easy to build a machine that runs on the heat differential between the cold block of ice and the much colder liquid hydrogen. However, since the heat in the ice is at a much lower level than the heat in our body, heat cannot flow from the ice to our hands. We cannot warm our hands by immersing them in ice. We have always known this fact. Now we know why we cannot warm our hand by touching a block of ice. Any time work of any kind is done some energy is lost. In every mechanical