Doesn't evaporative cooling work against the second law somehow? There is a syst... | Hacker News

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fryguy on Nov 2, 2016 | parent | context | favorite | on: Argonne researchers posit way to locally circumven...

Doesn't evaporative cooling work against the second law somehow? There is a system with some average temperature, and spontaneously enough entropy is created to cause some of the liquid to reach boiling temperature and leave the system, which decreases the average temperature of the liquid.

rubidium on Nov 2, 2016 [–]

"closed physical system" being the operative word.

Mass and energy is leaving, thus the average temp decreases but so does the particle count.

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