Construct · 1 fields · 2 citations

daemon: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

● anchor · a standalone construct Nearest construct by meaningratchetcompare the meanings
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daemon1 CONSTRUCTMaxwell's demonMAXWELL · MOLECULE SORTER

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Physics and thermodynamics

A molecule-sorting being in a thermodynamics thought experiment

Maxwell's 1871 book Theory of Heat introduced a thought experiment, first sketched in an 1867 letter to Tait, in which a tiny intelligent being guards a door between two gas chambers and lets fast molecules pass one way and slow ones the other, seeming to build a temperature difference from nothing and so appearing to violate the second law of thermodynamics. William Thomson later named this being a demon. Szilard's 1929 study showed that the being's own measurement and memory carry an entropy cost that rescues the second law, a result that helped found the physics of information. This referent is an imagined sorter of molecules used to probe entropy, not a guiding spirit within a person or a helper program on a computer.[1][2]

Unit
A hypothetical molecule-sorting agent in a thought experiment, gauged by the entropy it would appear to reduce
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Analysed theoretically; Szilard and later work quantified the information and entropy cost of its sorting in bits and in energy per bit

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Nearby constructs

entropy6 fields · 12 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsprocess3 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, three constructsagent3 fields · 5 citationsjingle · one word, three constructs

References

  1. Maxwell, J. C. (1871). Theory of heat. Longmans, Green, and Co.
  2. Szilard, L. (1929). Über die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen. Zeitschrift für Physik, 53(11-12), 840–856. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01341281

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