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To: Ol' Sparky
That is utterly absurd. For living things to be exempt from the Second Law, you've have to rewrite the Second Law.

Like Don Quixote, you tilt at windmills, thinking they be giants.

Where, pray tell, did you fabricate the idea that I said living things are exempt form the 2LoT? Why are you misrepresenting what I wrote? Are you really unable to comprehend the words that I used, or do you not read them because it might lead to a "forbidden" thought entering your mind?

The Second Law's MAIN application is toward living things that use energy.

Then main application of the "Second Law of Thermodynamics" is ...... Thermodynamics!. It is not restricted to biology; it covers biology and MANY non-living systems, including, but not limited to, inert gases, inorganic chemical reactions, and processes in stellar interiors, to name but a few. BTW, are you suggesting that there are "living things" that DON'T use energy, or was that just another one of your grammatical errors?

The idea that living things are becoming more orderly and the rest of the earth more disorderly is absolutely brainless. [emphasis added to highlight your juvenile argumentation tactics]

But you already admitted in an earlier reply that localized entropy decreases were possible at the expense of the entropy increasing even more in the rest of the system and its surroundings. The living things concentrate energy (from the food they eat), build muscle, reproduce (if they're lucky), and die, and which point the energy concentrated in their bodies is diffused to the surroundings, increasing the entropy of the system and its environment, exactly as the 2LoT demands. Even while they are alive, the entropy decrease in the organism is bought and paid for at the expense of an even greater amount of entropy INCREASE in the organism's surroundings, as the organism diffuses waste heat throughout its environment. IF you think there is a violation of the 2LoT, please point out which step it occurred in.

You ought to ask you university for REFUND of your thermodynamics class.

Sparky, you sound JUST LIKE that guy earning a minimum wage who is STILL busing tables in the cafeteria at my Alma Mater. But then I can understand why he would make a statement like that -- he lacked the intellectual ability to make a coherent argument about just about anything. What's your excuse, Sparky? Oh, by the way, table seven needs to be cleared....

472 posted on 02/03/2002 10:07:59 AM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow
The hurricane example is absurd. It proves absolutely nothing. The question is does the Second Law apply to the earth. The Second Law clearly supports an increase in entropy and the concept of physical systems becoming more disorderly. A hurricane does NOT involve the earth decreasing entropy and the net result is more disorder. It's a stupid example.

What fact, not theory, do you have that life on this planet is exempt from the Second Law in regard to disorder? And what fact do you have that planet is decreasing in entropy (if you believe that as Vlade seems to)?

476 posted on 02/03/2002 10:18:24 AM PST by Ol' Sparky
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