Making Big Money

Highlights of the activity

1. Students are separated into small groups and given a device or material that violates the second law. The students must then create an apparatus utilizing this perfect material that would be valuable.
2. Students will have the opportunity to consider the limitations the second law places on non-ideal physical systems.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

We have found that students frequently find it challenging to utilize entropy for performing thermodynamic calculations since entropy is difficult to physically measure. However, the second law of thermodynamics places very important and unavoidable limitations on real-world processes. This activity encourages students to consider how breaking the second law of thermodynamics would result in amazingly efficient devices that would ultimately be worth a large sum of money.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version

Student Handouts

eebigmoneyhand.pdf

eebigmoneyhand.tex