Syzygy

Abstract

We were having a rare meeting of the Entropy Club at Purchase College. The Entropy Club met irregularly since, by strict rule, a meeting could only occur when all four of its members just happened to be in the same place at the same time. John, who was the physics major, was doing his senior thesis on entropy, and was currently bedeviled with Maxwell's demon. This imp controls a shutter on a stream and sends the high temperature particles to the left, and the low temperature particles to the right, creating a temperature differential that could be tapped to create electricity. This meant that the demon was basically making energy from nothing, a paradoxical result. Since I was doing my senior thesis on paradox I found this a fascinating situation to ponder. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.