Exorcising Maxwell's demon from Liboff's three-channel conundrum (Q630122)

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Exorcising Maxwell's demon from Liboff's three-channel conundrum
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    Exorcising Maxwell's demon from Liboff's three-channel conundrum (English)
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    17 March 2011
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    From the authors' abstract: ``We study a model proposed by \textit{R. L. Liboff} [Found. Phys. Lett. 10, 89 (1997)] to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Discs are moving without friction in three connected channels inclined by \(\pi/3\) with respect to each other. Based on the geometry considerations, it was argued that eventually all the discs end up in the middle channel regardless of their initial positions. This would mean a decrease of the entropy of the system and violation of the second law.'' The authors argue that no such anomalous behavior occurs in the system neither from classical nor from quantum mechanical viewpoint; the evidence is partially based on computer experimental results.
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    Maxwell's demon
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    second law of thermodynamics
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    perpetual motion of the second kind
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    phase space
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    ergodic system
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