Callen's Adiabatic Piston and the Limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Bruno Crosignani; Paolo Di Porto; Claudio Conti

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Callen's Adiabatic Piston and the Limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Bruno Crosignani·Paolo Di Porto·Claudio Conti

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Abstract

The limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which reigns undisputed in the macroscopic world, are investigated at the mesoscopic level, corresponding to spatial dimensions of a few microns. An extremely simple isolated system, modeled after Callen's adiabatic piston, [1] can, under appropriate conditions, be described as a self-organizing Brownian motor and shown to exhibit a perpetuum mobile behavior.

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Bruno Crosignani, Paolo Di Porto, Claudio Conti. 2006-06-08. Callen's Adiabatic Piston and the Limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0410050

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