How does the world work?

[barush]

Have you ever wondered how does our world work? No? Me neither. But our physics teacher did and this is the result... The essay about The second law of thermodynamics I was forced to write. It's nothing revolutionary, but I thought I'd put it here:)

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

        Who cares about the second law of thermodynamics? Well, nobody apart from scientists I guess. But maybe we should pay more attention to this phenomenon because it seems like it pretty much influences our every day life. It explains why paper, trees, coal, gas and all things like them burn, why sand and dry ice even in pure oxygen can't ever burn, why the Sun will eventually cool down... Simply, it tells us how the material world works.

        The first step to understanding what the second law of thermodynamics is and what it applies to is looking at the direction that energy flows. A hot frying pan cools down when it's taken off the kitchen stove because  its heat flows out to the cooler room air.  But the opposite never happens. All types of energy spread out if there's a way they can do so. So the second law summarizes that totally different events involving all kinds of energy have a common cause.
 
         Even our psychological sense of time is based on the second law. Rocks in the valley don't suddenly roll up mountain, outside air doesn't rush to the flat tire, batteries don't get charged by sitting around. Why? Because energy flows from being concentrated to becoming diffused. This all corresponds with our lifetime experience and how we feel time goes. That's also why people sometimes call the second law 'time's arrow'.

         But it's  also necessary for the second law to be obstructed or hindered. Chemical bonds don't allow mountains, stones etc. to obey the second law and fall to a lower level. They haven't slid down to sea level in the last hundred centuries!  So we can be thankful for blockage of the second law because only few things we enjoy would exist if it wasn't obstructed.

        I think no more proofs are necessary to show that the second law of thermodynamics is and will be a very important part of our lives. We shouldn't overlook this fact.