Can Someone Explain How the Second Law of Thermodynamics Opposes the First Law?

[kthouz]

1. i read all my notes about the thermodynamics laws and the second one was so interesting? As i found it opposes the first one so how ia that possible. If not just tell me the right thing.
2. I've tried to make a diffenrence between the heat engines and the refrigerator: heat engines absorb heat and transform it( not completely) into work whereas refrigerators transorm work (with some few additional heat) into heat. But the problem is that I'm not conviced about the refrigeratorm, so i want someone else to make me sure.

 

[russ_watters]

You are correct. Refrigerators use mechanical work to move heat around, heat engines allow heat to move around to produce mechanical work.

 

[Shooting Star]

You must have somehow misinterpreted your notes. The 1st law states that energy is conserved, and the second law states that the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will increase, or tend to increase over time, approaching some maximum value at equilibrium. There is no ccontradiction whatsoever.

 

[Morga]

Yeah entropy (A measure of disorder) will tend to increase, meaning that everything will get more disordered as time progesses. Solids (Very ordered), Liquids (Disordered) and gases (Very disordered).