Originally posted by 35mmfilmfan And O'Toole's corollary : 'Murphy was an optimist.'
Three rules of life :
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't quit.
Those are, in a highly modified way, expressions of the Laws of Thermodynamics which, so far as anyone has been able to determine, govern all of existence. They have mathematical expressions, inscrutable to any but exceptionally knowledgeable individuals, but they are sometimes put to laymen in simplified versions such as this:
1) you must play by the rules
and the basic rules are:
2) no matter how hard you try, you cannot win (= you can transform and transfer matter and energy, but you will never have more than what you had at the start)
3) in fact, it is certain you will lose (no matter how hard you try, no matter how carefully you proceed, if you attempt to use or transfer energy, some will always escape or be lost and there is no way you can prevent the loss or get the lost energy back)
4) and if you start with nothing, nothing is all you will ever have (= neither energy nor matter can be created out of nothing)
Simple examples: If you use water power to generate electricity, the electrical power you get out will never be more than the water power you used to generate the electricity. If you use electricity to charge the batteries in an electric car, the batteries will never contain more Kw-hours of power than the amount you used to charge the batteries.
In fact, the KwHr in the batteries will always be less than the KwHr used to charge them, not matter how you design the charging mechanism, and when those batteries are used to run the car, the power driving the car will always be less the KwHr contained in the batteries..
IF THERE WERE EXCEPTIONS TO THESE RULES, then it would be possible to construct a "perpetual motion machine."