April 23, 2002

INTRODUCTION

Warmth can flow only from warm to cold. Every body knows that. Nobody doubts it. Physicists teach it. The SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS confirms and states it:

          "Heat cannot pass by itself from a colder to a warmer body"
Correct?
Well, not quite. Because you have to exclude me. And once you study this web page and, once it is ready, my BOOK

GRAVITY MACHINE
My Search for Peaceful Energy,

you might start to wonder. It might even entice you to build your own gravity machine, a PERPETUUM MOBILE OF THE SECOND KIND. Wouldn't it be nice to sit in your bathtub and watch a boat swimming around you on its own power with the energy to drive the screw of your boat coming solely from the latent heat of the bath water?

Are you one of the few energy conservation conscious people, who, in winter, don't drain the warm water after your bath but let it sit until the next morning in order to use its inherent heat to warm the house? Over night the bath water will cool down to room temperature, in accordance with the SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. If you heated the bath water with heating oil or gas, the same energy source you are using to heat your house, then you got your warm water for your bath free of charge, because by releasing its heat into the bath room air, you are saving an equal amount of energy heating your house.

When you enter your bath room the next morning, you will see your dirty bath water still sitting in your tub, but your face will brighten. Your little boat is still running around in circles! Where does it gets its energy? Could it be possible that its movement demonstrates a perpetuum mobile of the second kind?

During the second half of the 19teenth century a spirited discussion went on in the circles of the leading physicists of the time. And not every one of them agreed with the conclusions. L.Boltzmann (1) and J.C.Maxwell (2) argued, that a vertical column of gas under equilibrium conditions would have to show equal temperatures over height. Otherwise the construction of a perpetuum mobile of the second kind would be possible.

But Loschmidt (3) disagreed. He felt that gravity would cause a stratification of temperatures, cold at the top, warmer at the bottom.

Throughout the years theoretical arguments were put forth; and they changed over time. As long as the results agreed with the SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS, they were eventually accepted nearly universally as correct. A good summary is given by A. Trupp (4).

Who was right? Why had nobody, at least to my knowledge, ever published experimental results disproving the ideas of Loschmidt? His opinion should have had some weight because he was the first who counted the gas molecules in a cubic centimeter, a pretty high number. Here everybody agreed and we all learn this number as the Loschmidt Number even today.

Six years ago, I asked myself, was it possible to measure the temperature distribution in vertical columns of gas in a meaningful way with the limited resources available to me? Was this possible for me, an engineer, not even trained as a physicist? Or could this work be done only by an outsider like myself, as a physicist would not even try, as he knew the result already before starting out: the temperature at the top had to be the same as on the bottom. The SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS demanded it. And that is sacrosanct.

Well, I dared to try! The results are surprising. Yes, warmth can travel from cold to warm!