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From: Zen Cycle <funkmaster@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: Suspension losses
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:58:54 -0500
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On 1/16/2025 5:56 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
> Zen Cycle <funkmaster@hotmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On 1/16/2025 12:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
>>> On 1/16/2025 7:14 AM, zen cycle wrote:
>>>> On 1/15/2025 6:39 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> You should look at the energy used for the controls and think
>>>>> about what becomes of it. Do that in microcopic detail.
>>>>
>>>> If you think it all ends up as heat (IR spectrum) you have a gross
>>>> misunderstanding of electronics. First off, the indicators
>>>> dissipate energy in the visible light spectrum (this is why LEDs
>>>> are more efficient lighting than incandescent, very little energy
>>>> is used in the IR spectrum).
>>> OK, a thought experiment: Take an adiabatic container - that is, a
>>> _perfectly_ insulated box (a physical impossibility, but useful for
>>> our analysis). Let the box contain whatever you like - just air,
>>> some solid objects, whatever.
>>> Cut an LED sized hole in it and insert an LED of your choice so it
>>> shines into the box. Turn on the LED.
>>> What happens to the light entering the box? Obviously, you don't end
>>> up with a box full of light, so it isn't stored; it somehow goes
>>> away.
>>
>> lol...no, it doesn't 'go away'. For all intents and purposes it
>> suffers the safe fate as Schrödinger's cat.
>>
>>> And what happens to the temperature inside the box, and why?
>>
>> It will rise somewhat due to the residual IR energy from the
>> system. Visible spectrum LEDs do emit some IR, just not nearly as much
>> as incandescents (given the same lux)
>>
>>> Answer: The temperature of whatever's inside the box will rise. The
>>> energy put into _all_ spectra by the LED, including the visible
>>> light spectrum, ultimately converts to heat.
>>
>> So _all_ forms of energy convert to heat? You should write a paper on that.
>>
>>>
>>>> Secondly, think about your premise that it all turns into heat -
>>>> this means no energy is available to do any other form of work.
>>> In physics or mechanical engineering, work is defined as force
>>> moving through a distance, or torque moving though an angle of
>>> rotation. Valid units of measurement are the same as the units for
>>> energy: foot*pounds, Newton*meters or Joules, etc. all of which
>>> (interestingly) can be converted to BTUs, which are normally units
>>> measuring heat.
>>> And in general, you're right, energy converted to heat is not
>>> normally available to do work.
>>
>> I used the term 'work' more generically, in this case running a
>> program, setting bits in memory, etc. Yes, residual heat from the
>> process, but energy is used to perform whatever task, Heat is the
>> result of losses in the system (thermal junctions from die bonds, for
>> example)
> 
> I don't believe that is correct.  All the energy used to run a program
> does eventually get rejected as heat.  I suppose either 1 or 0 bits must
> have a slightly higher potential energy, but the net number of each is
> not likely to change much, and the energy difference must be small.

Hmmm, so you're suggesting that if we consider computers to be heaters 
that also perform a computing function, that using it as a heater 
ostensibly gets us computing functions for free as long as we're 
expecting the heating function to be primary?

Sounds suspiciously perpetual-motion-esque.

> 
> There is a field of study called "thermodynamic computing", which
> studies the minimum energy that must be dissipated for various logic
> operations.  Turns out that reversible computations, ie those that do
> not irretrievably lose information, can be more thermodynamically
> efficient than those that do lose information.  Eventually this sort of
> thinking is hoped to enable more economical computation.

RAM vs NVRAM? I think that's been done before.


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