Oh, I must have made a typo; the actual problem is to express the efficiency of C in terms of B. Not sure why they're labelled that way though.
I believe the heat flows ##Q_{in}## were determined correctly? I expressed the temperatures in terms of pressure, volume and ##T_1## via Charles's...
The first picture was provided along the problem statement. The second has my annotations.
I initially began by calculating the ratio of efficiencies, since the work done is obviously the same and cancels out, but after failing and having seen the form of the solution I saw that that cannot...
D'oh – it had occurred to me that my reasoning would lead to removing virtually any wire, but I could not have found a way out were it not for your edifying response. Thank you!
I find it remarkable that some people just happen to get this intuitively (the solution I was provided with does not...
I think I see what you're saying, but it still seems odd to me that there can be a voltage drop (potential difference) between two points on a perfect conductor. Or else how are the wires removed in Fig. 4 connecting points of different potential?
Oh, I did not word that correctly. In Fig. 4 the connections between equipotential points from Fig. 2 were removed. Perhaps then equipotentiality is not a valid criterion for removal, but rather the absence of current? Would you care to explain why there is no current in the wires removed in Fig. 3?
A sketch of the setup and the equivalent circuit are attached.
I believe the correct way to solve this is to redraw the circuit as shown in Fig. 3 and then remove the connections between evidently equipotential points, which reduces the problem to a familiar setup of in parallel and in series...