When an apple falls from the tree, its potential energy is converted into kineti
ID: 201758 • Letter: W
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When an apple falls from the tree, its potential energy is converted into kinetic energy; as it hits the ground, its kinetic energy is converted into heat. Which law of thermodynamic do these transformations obey to? 3- 4- Why is it fair to claim that no energy conversion is efficient at 100% A sugar cube will spontaneously dissolve in water; which law of thermodynamics does this obey to? Explain. 5- 6- Building a living organism is a multistep organizational process. How does the entropy of biological structures change during their hierarchical assembly? How do living cells comply with the second law of thermodynamics while creating order within themselves? a. b.Explanation / Answer
The first law describes these energy change as there is no temperature difference between air and apple. There is no work even though the apple is falling down there is no change in the internal energy of an apple. the internal change is zero. the structure of Apple remains the same. the potential energy change is equal to the change in kinetic energy. when the apple hits the ground kinetic energy is converted into internal energy that is heat.
No energy system has 100% efficiency due to the second law of thermodynamics. For every energy transformation, there is a small loss to entropy. various different energy types have their own losses of energy, usually in the forms of heat and motion. In ecosystems, the biggest energy losses occur as respiration. ecological efficiency which is the amount of energy transferred from one trophic level to the other is between the range of 5-30%. since ecological efficiency is so low, each trophic level has a smaller energy pool from which it can withdraw energy. This is the reason why food webs have no more than four to five trophic levels.
when the sugar cube is dissolved in water The cube breaks apart, and sugar molecules are scattered throughout the water. There is no order among the sugar molecules in the water solution at all. The entropy of the system has increased because the sugar molecules have become completely disorganized.
during the formation of the stable structures at the highest hierarchical level the supramolecular level. According to the second law of thermodynamics, Nature uses least thermodynamically stable structures belonging to a lower level, for example, the molecular level. for simple closed systems when temperature and pressure are constant, the criterion of the spontaneity of processes is a change of the Gibbs energy, G, which tends towards a minimum. The Gibbs energy can be as positive as well as negative.
The second law describes the direction of spontaneity for a biological system. the system tends to move along a path until it reaches thermal and mechanical (thermodynamic) equilibrium. In the case of living organisms, a thermodynamic equilibrium implies dead and decomposition, as at that point no directed motive force is produced by the body and its temperature starts approaching the natural room temperature instead of its homeostatic temperature. so this shows that a living system maintaining homeostasis is actually in a steady state, where it is constantly consuming energy in order to avoid 'heat death. s0, at a local level, the living body must overall continuously move away from equilibrium. This is equivalent to saying that it reduces or keeps constant its own entropy.
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