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perpetual-motion machine

   Also found in: Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.02 sec.
perpetual-motion machine, device that would be able to operate continuously and supply useful work, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics Carnot cycle after the French physicist Sadi Carnot , who first discussed the implications of such cycles. During the Carnot cycle occurring in the operation of a heat engine, a definite quantity of heat is absorbed from a reservoir at high temperature; part of this heat is
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. A machine that would produce more energy energy, in physics, the ability or capacity to do work or to produce change. Forms of energy include heat , light , sound , electricity , and chemical energy.
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 in the form of work work, in physics and mechanics, transfer of energy by a force acting to displace a body. Work is equal to the product of the force and the distance through which it produces movement.
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 than is supplied to it in the form of heat heat, nonmechanical energy in transit, associated with differences in temperature between a system and its surroundings or between parts of the same system.

Measures of Heat


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 would violate the first law of thermodynamics, which is a special case of the law of conservation of energy (see conservation laws conservation laws, in physics, basic laws that together determine which processes can or cannot occur in nature; each law maintains that the total value of the quantity governed by that law, e.g., mass or energy, remains unchanged during physical processes.
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, in physics), and is known as a perpetual-motion machine of the first kind. A machine that would completely convert heat from a warm body into work, without letting any heat flow into a cooler body, would violate the second law of thermodynamics, which is concerned with entropy entropy (ĕn`trəpē), quantity specifying the amount of disorder or randomness in a system bearing energy or information.
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 changes, and is known as a perpetual-motion machine of the second kind. There were a number of early attempts to design and construct various types of perpetual-motion machines; however, since the 19th cent., when the laws of thermodynamics became understood, most such attempts have been abandoned.


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Little, Big was unique in my reading experience, a thoroughly American fictional world that touched the realms of faerie without mechanical aids (though there's very cool perpetual-motion machine in the attic).
Johnny Carson would introduce him, and out Rodney would come, jerking, twitching, yanking at his tie, a perpetual-motion machine of anxiety; sweating, eyes bulging.
Add to that the abuse of congressional power by senators and congressmen who also believe and are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on ill-conceived medical perpetual-motion machines.
 
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