Okay and now I have my coffee. Now I've been thinking about Nicholas Sadi Carnot since my last post and what I want to say next, and I'll start it with this: the espresso maker at my place of residence/work is not only great for making bitter, black liquid; it's also good for explaining what the hell Carnot was talking about.
It was made in Venezuela 14 years ago. It is a simple stove top coffee maker, and it doesn't need no pumps to make coffee. This is what it looks like in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, my dear imaginary friend: http://www.cerinicoffee.com/Bialetti-Moka-Express-Espresso-Maker.html . So you pour water into the lower portion and put it on the stove. Then the magical elves of heat and pressure push the water up through the coffee grounds resulting in liquid caffeine. Since my brain works the way it does, I like to stare at simple machines while I'm using them and try to piece together how they work. When I first came across this machine I was reading Carnot's essay "The Motive Power of Heat", which explained this phenomenon.
Now, the point: If you increase the heat of fluid, it will expand. Since the water exists in a rigid container, the pressure in the container will increase. A fluid flows, therefore it will try to find a place to go. Sometimes the fluid will make its own path by busting a wall, in the case of the espresso maker, we give a place to go. So the heat builds and builds until the water goes up through the coffee grounds and then up through a pipe.
My head has exploded. In my attempt to try to explain this, I went back through my notes, books and did some further research with Google. For the time being I must stop, but I will leave off on a final thought. Look up Mariotte's Bottle. It uses the exact same principle that I, some young punk with no previous training, have been trying to explain. This has been fun though, and I look foward to doing more of this. I'm learning a lot and I hope that through these post I can begin to pass on what I've learned.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The real number one
The blog is called Aristotle's Mistake. It comes from a Bertrand Russell quote. I came up with the idea for this blog during a small obsession with logic and all things logic related. So yeah I like math. And physics. It's a healthy enjoyment of all things related to how the world works.
Growing up, my father used to tell me how important it is know how things work. To that end, I learned how to take things apart (I'm just starting to learn how to put them back together again.) What I've realized is, physics is rules to how things work. Think of this way; the world is a board game, and we are learning the rules as we go along. Nothing we do falls outside of these rules, but we don't fully understand the rules. So, we can do something that doesn't make sense at first, but that helps us fully understand the game. Math is a way to translate these rules to others.
Now that I've starting flapping my gums a bit, lets talk about some more things that may or may not make sense. Recently, I've been enjoying books and writing about thermodynamics. If you walk down into my living room, you'll first notice that my roommates have somehow contained my mess to the table. Upon closer inspection of said table, you'll notice that it is covered in books. These are roommates, true, but I'm in the process of reading them. And yes, they are all textbooks on engineering, thermodynamics, and hydrodynamics. Then there all the essays and books on the subject in my room. In short, I want to summarize what I have learned, I really do. But I'm not sure how.
The person who let me burrow her textbooks claimed I'm obsessed with entropy, so I'll start with that. Entropy is . . . disorder! At a macroscopic level (you know, a large level) entropy is the "waste" energy. My reasoning for this definition is Rudolf Clausius. Clausius referenced Sadi Carnot's work in his own essay "On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom". Carnot laid down much of the foundation for thermodynamics and many after him added to it. Clausius used Carnot's example of a steam engine, and in a nutshell explained how some heat will escape the system. That's why I call it the waste.
Ok, I'm done for now. I'll pick up there later. I think from now on, when I write, I'll just try to tranq my brain the best I can. Someone may come across this. When it comes to probability, the chances of someone even seeing this is slim. Whatever, it's fun.
Growing up, my father used to tell me how important it is know how things work. To that end, I learned how to take things apart (I'm just starting to learn how to put them back together again.) What I've realized is, physics is rules to how things work. Think of this way; the world is a board game, and we are learning the rules as we go along. Nothing we do falls outside of these rules, but we don't fully understand the rules. So, we can do something that doesn't make sense at first, but that helps us fully understand the game. Math is a way to translate these rules to others.
Now that I've starting flapping my gums a bit, lets talk about some more things that may or may not make sense. Recently, I've been enjoying books and writing about thermodynamics. If you walk down into my living room, you'll first notice that my roommates have somehow contained my mess to the table. Upon closer inspection of said table, you'll notice that it is covered in books. These are roommates, true, but I'm in the process of reading them. And yes, they are all textbooks on engineering, thermodynamics, and hydrodynamics. Then there all the essays and books on the subject in my room. In short, I want to summarize what I have learned, I really do. But I'm not sure how.
The person who let me burrow her textbooks claimed I'm obsessed with entropy, so I'll start with that. Entropy is . . . disorder! At a macroscopic level (you know, a large level) entropy is the "waste" energy. My reasoning for this definition is Rudolf Clausius. Clausius referenced Sadi Carnot's work in his own essay "On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom". Carnot laid down much of the foundation for thermodynamics and many after him added to it. Clausius used Carnot's example of a steam engine, and in a nutshell explained how some heat will escape the system. That's why I call it the waste.
Ok, I'm done for now. I'll pick up there later. I think from now on, when I write, I'll just try to tranq my brain the best I can. Someone may come across this. When it comes to probability, the chances of someone even seeing this is slim. Whatever, it's fun.
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