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CHAPTER 20 The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Answers
Chapter Opening Question

Yes. Thats what a refrigerator does: It makes heat ow from the

cold interior of the refrigerator to the warm outside. The second
law of thermodynamics says that heat cannot spontaneously ow
from a cold body to a hot one. A refrigerator has a motor that does
work on the system to force the heat to ow in that way.

Test Your Understanding Questions

20.1 Answer: (ii) Like sliding a book across a table, rubbing your
hands together uses friction to convert mechanical energy into
heat. The (impossible) reverse process would involve your hands
spontaneously getting colder, with the released energy forcing
your hands to move rhythmically back and forth!
20.2 Answer: (iii), (i), (ii) From Eq. (20.4) the efciency is
e = W>Q H , and from Eq. (20.2) W = Q H + Q C = Q H - Q C .
For engine (i) Q H = 5000 J and Q C = - 4500 J, so W = 5000 J +
1- 4500 J2 = 500 J and e = 1500 J2>15000 H2 = 0.100. For
engine (ii) Q H = 25,000 J and W = 2000 J, so e = 12000 J2>
125,000 J2 = 0.080. For engine (iii) W = 400 J and Q C =
- 2800 J, so Q H = W - Q C = 400 J - 1 -2800 J2 = 3200 J and
e = 1400 J2>13200 J2 = 0.125.
20.3 Answers: (i), (ii) Doubling the amount of fuel burned per
cycle means that Q H is doubled, so the resulting pressure increase
from b to c in Fig. 20.6 is greater. The compression ratio and hence
the efciency remain the same, so Q C (the amount of heat
rejected to the environment) must increase by the same factor as
Q H . Hence the pressure drop from d to a in Fig. 20.6 is also
greater. The volume V and the compression ratio r dont change, so
the horizontal dimensions of the pV-diagram dont change.
20.4 Answer: no A refrigerator uses an input of work to transfer
heat from one system (the refrigerators interior) to another system
(its exterior, which includes the house in which the refrigerator is
installed). If the door is open, these two systems are really the
same system and will eventually come to the same temperature. By
the rst law of thermodynamics, all of the work input to the refrigerator motor will be converted into heat and the temperature in
your house will actually increase. To cool the house you need a
system that will transfer heat from it to the outside world, such as
an air conditioner or heat pump.
20.5 Answers: no, no Both the 100%-efcient engine of Fig.
20.11a and the workless refrigerator of Fig. 20.11b return to the

same state at the end of a cycle as at the beginning, so the net

change in internal energy of each system is zero 1U = 02. For
the 100%-efcient engine, the net heat ow into the engine equals
the net work done, so Q = W, Q - W = 0, and the rst law
1U = Q - W2 is obeyed. For the workless refrigerator, no net
work is done 1so W = 02 and as much heat ows into it as out 1so
Q = 02, so again Q - W = 0 and U = Q - W in accordance
with the rst law. It is the second law of thermodynamics that tells
us that both the 100%-efcient engine and the workless refrigerator are impossible.
20.6 Answer: no The efciency can be no better than that of a
Carnot engine running between the same two temperature limits,
eCarnot = 1 - 1TC>TH2 [Eq. (20.14)]. The temperature TC of the
cold reservoir for this air-cooled engine is about 300 K (ambient
temperature), and the temperature TH of the hot reservoir cannot
exceed the melting point of copper, 1356 K (see Table 17.4). Hence
the maximum possible Carnot efciency is e = 1 - (300 K2>
11356 K2 = 0.78, or 78%. The temperature of any real engine
would be less than this, so it would be impossible for the inventors engine to attain 85% efciency. You should invest your
money elsewhere.
20.7 Answers: 102 J/K, no The process described is exactly
the opposite of the process used in Example 20.10. The result violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the
entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease.
20.8 Answer: (i) For case (i), we saw in Example 20.8 (Section
20.7) that for an ideal gas, the entropy change in a free expansion
is the same as in an isothermal expansion. From Eq. (20.23), this
implies that the ratio of the number of microscopic states after and
before the expansion, w2>w1 , is also the same for these two cases.
From Example 20.11, w2>w1 = 2N, so the number of microscopic
states increases by a factor 2N. For case (ii), in a reversible expansion the entropy change is S = 1 dQ>T = 0; if the expansion is
adiabatic there is no heat ow, so S = 0. From Eq. (20.23),
w2>w1 = 1 and there is no change in the number of microscopic
states. The difference is that in an adiabatic expansion the temperature drops and the molecules move more slowly, so they have
fewer microscopic states available to them than in an isothermal
expansion.

Bridging Problem
Answers: (a) 34.83C

(b) +12.1 J>K