Sounds strange, doesn't it? But I'm absolutely serious. They are amazingly applicable to everyday life. I've pondered ways of saying this in the context of educational reform.
If you don't mind, I'll practice my pitch with you.
(Old hippies and such will understand what I mean by 'grok'. To those who've never come across the term before, you could define it as 'to really, really understand'.
If you were to Google von Helmholtz you'd find that he's known for three Laws of Thermo-dynamics. (I'm doing this from memory, by the way. Long term memory for that matter. I might get details wrong. But the gist of it will be correct.)
Law #3, to my mind, is merely a special case of Law #2. It's able to get one into an abstract and pondering state of mind, and is therefore interesting, but it has no effect on day to day living. The other two can have a very beneficial effect.
To paraphrase the First Law, "Energy can not appear out of nowhere and it can not disappear into nothing." When you use energy for anything you can be sure that it already existed near at hand in some stored form and available for your use. After your desired work is done that same energy still exists nearby (at least at first) and might conceivably be re-gained. But only at a cost. Such cost being usually too high to make the endeavor worthwhile. But I'm veering into Third Law here and need to stop because there's more to consider with First Law.
The First Law might be considered to have a more far ranging corollary. We might consider it one of the Laws of Day-to-Day Living. It might be quoted as, "The ability to get something useful done can not appear out of nowhere and it can not disappear into nothing". What are some good examples of 'the ability to get something useful done'? Well, money comes to mind right off the bat. You can get useful things done with it. And we all know that it doesn't appear out of nowhere into our bank accounts. And when someone tries to get you to believe that he'll help just this very thing to occur, then you'll know, know, know that you're dealing with a con man if you Grok the Laws. (Of course many of you already know that he's a con man. But you know what? There are a lot of people out there who don't know it.) There are ways, besides money, to get useful things done. Want to lose weight? You can exercise. You can diet. Or you can use a combination of the two. But if someone tries to sell you a dietary supplement and implies that you can go on eating the way you have until now plus you won't have to exercise more but you'll still lose weight, then you'll know that you're dealing with a con man if you Grok the Laws. When someone proposes simple fixes to complex problems, they are largely depending on 'the ability to get something useful done' appearing out of nowhere. I say 'largely' because their simple fix might have some use. But, still, they're trying to power a good sized city with a flashlight battery. It ain't gonna work. They're trying to get something for nothing. Having the goodwill of friends and neighbors is an example of having the 'ability to get something useful done'. And there might even be an exception to the Law operating here. After all, we sometimes have this goodwill without having done anything to earn it. It seems as though it appeared out of nowhere. But maintaining it takes effort. That part, at least, obeys the Laws. Swaying public opinion is certainly getting something useful done. But it doesn't just happen; you gotta work at it.
If you fully digest and understand this principle, then you'll be practically fully immunized and protected from infection by all sorts of 'magical thinking'. Everything from get-rich-quick schemes to oversimplified social or political philosophies. And you won't waste your attention or your time when someone claims that NASA has 'proven' that a Starship Enterprise drive "really works!" And you'll know, you'll really know, when someone is making excuses rather than living up to their obligations. You won't need to be fooled a bunch of times. You'll know the truth right off. You've heard people say, "If it sounds too good to be true, then it's too good to be true". We all believe this. (Though I've known people who didn't believe it.) But maybe it's sometimes hard to tell if it really does sound too good to be true? It's not hard to tell when you Grok the Laws. You'll know when you're hearing horsefeathers. To put it another way, I've heard it said that 'if someone tells you that they saw a pink elephant, that's fine. But you'd better go see for yourself". When you Grok the Laws you don't bother to go see for yourself. You know that the elephant is a lie or a mistake. And you're never wrong.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states (paraphrasing again), "Energy that is not contained will flow, by itself and with no urging needed, from areas of greater concentration to areas of lesser concentration". To corollate this with the Laws of Day-to-Day Living, I'll have to use a bit of Third Law. But I don't have to quote. The active principle involved here would be something along the lines of, "you actually can make energy flow against it's natural inclination. But it always requires fresh energy from outside plus the fresh energy needed will always be more than what you can possibly reclaim". It's harder to fit this one into day to day living. In fact, I'm not sure yet just how to word the Second Law of Day-to-Day Living. (Help would be appreciated) So far I've only been able to plausibly compare this principle to large scale societal actions and well-being. As opposed to individual actions. Consider industrialization in general. I really don't necessarily oppose it and I'm aware that we can't realistically go back. I'm not proposing any such thing. And I'm not unaware of industrializations positives. We really do enjoy a great life in so many ways. But there've been negatives as well. Our roads are inhospitable to anyone who is not in a machine. We are far more strangers than ever before to even our neighbors. The world is growing dirtier, we must continue to make it so and we don't know how much more it can take. The experts might well have some notion of how much longer our raw materials will last. But we can't trust them to tell us honestly how much time we have and we have no reasonable way of making the estimates ourselves. Industrialization itself was the equivalent of making energy flow against it's natural inclination. Or we might say that it was the equivalent of 'disturbing the equilibrium'. The benefits gained are the equivalent of profiting from energy squeezed out of the system against it's natural inclination. But pollution and resource depletion are the equivalent of the costs necessary to squeeze those benefits out of it. And we really don't know, in the long run, whether or not those benefits justified those costs. (If the Second Law really does apply to this situation, then it would seem to be telling us that the cost must outweigh the benefit. A depressing thought. Let's hope that the Second Law doesn't fully apply. But we'd be wise to consider it as applying. We can hope for some counter-acting factor. We can look for such a thing. But we'd best consider ourselves warned that the cost might be very high.)
So it seems that my Second Law of Day-to-Day Living comes up a bit short on answers. But it demands attention to questions that are very much worth asking and pondering.
But we'd be turning out better informed citizens with better judgement if we required students to understand the Laws of Thermo-dynamics.
If this seems at all compelling to you, then google von Helmholtz (first name; Ferdinand. I think) Read about the experiments that he and others conducted to lead themselves to their conclusions about energy. And ponder a few questions of your own. Here's an example. You understand, of course, that the air conditioner in your home takes heat out of the air. What becomes of that heat? Pondering questions like that will help protect you from bullshit in the larger world. It really will.