The Broken Engine of Szilard
Classical Physics
2014-11-03 v1
Abstract
A crucial step in the operation of the Szilard engine is the isothermal expansion of a single particle system. This expansion, seemingly a natural consequence, is unable to proceed when the piston is considered appropriately to be a thermal system subject to fluctuations in energy at a constant temperature. The Szilard engine is thus unable to complete its cycle and the effort to locate the mysterious missing entropy of turns out to be superfluous.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.8565,
title = {The Broken Engine of Szilard},
author = {Quanmin Guo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.8565},
year = {2014}
}