[Right Wing Professor]

Does the availability of energy ensure that order can increase within an open system?

The answer to this last question is NO as you very well know.

Read about laser cooling and get back to me.

[nasamn777]

Your link says:

That sounds like quite a trick.

It is. It took physicists quite a while to figure out how to do it. (Click here to find out more about laser cooling and the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics.) You start with the idea that laser light comes in a stream of photons. These photons are very light, so to speak. Compared to an atom, they are like ping-pong balls compared to a bowling ball. But in just the same way you can push a bowling ball around if you shoot a big enough stream of ping-pong balls at it, you can push atoms around by bouncing laser light off them. Try to adjust the laser power and laser position to slow down the atoms.

What happens to the light that bounces off the surface? Ultimately it will contact a surface and be absorbed!

[grey_whiskers]

Does the availability of energy ensure that order can increase within an open system? The answer to this last question is NO as you very well know. Read about laser cooling and get back to me.

Don't think that was quite fair, RWP--the question did say "ensure" and "can" ; and your hyperlink contains an example of energy (ordinary light) that decreases order by increasing heat. The use of the word 'can' in the question allowed for the possibility that entropy increase or decrease depending on the circumstances.

OTOH the reply (second sentence above) was a flat NO, so you were right to make the distinction.

Cheers!