Molecules are free spirits having not much to contend with that causes them problems. They go bounding about as long as they haven't been trapped into a crystal structure, and even then they give a wiggle now and then to express themselves. But it's in the liquid and gaseous state that they come alive. It has been written that these small particles are unconcerned by the temperature, but that is untrue. They jog along at one pace, but with a change in temperature they have to adjust to the new environment - and if in a gaseous state, they fall prey to the change of pressure (that is the nearness of one another) as well, which restricts their movement as they rebound off each other and the container walls. When you change temperature or pressure you change the energy in the system which is reflected by the gas law PV=nRT, where p is pressure, v is volume, n is the number of the critters in the pot, R is a constant which makes the equation come out even and t is the temperature.
Now some of those tiny bits of matter are moving about with gay abandon, others are hardly moving at all and some are dashing their heads against the walls that restrain them not unlike a bunch of politicians hoping to break down barriers by brute force. The collisions are elastic, that is that when they strike another or the container walls, they bounce back and iftheir companion atoms take off like a turpentined cat, they have to slow down by an equivalent amount so that no energy is created or destroyed.
Mix some big molecules in with the small ones, as example mix hydrogen gas with one of the fluorocarbons and when the small hydrogen molecule strikes the larger one, they both bounce but proportionately to their mass. Same thing happens in a solution, in fact you can actually see the results of the collisions which is called Brownian movement in name of someone with a name like Smith or whatever.
More than a few years ago an individual by name of James Clerk Maxwell thought how good it would be if you could entice those molecules that were bounding along as though they were driven at the speed of boiling water, to separate themselves from those that were moving as slow as molasses in the winter. Then you could get some useful work out of the hot ones and gather up the cold ones for some time in the summer when a touch of cold would be useful.
However, since these molecules are quite small and you will find some 60.3 billion, billion of them trapped in a suitable cubic container that is about four inches on the side. That's when you have one molecular weight of them. A machine pictured by Maxwell would have to be small but not as small as the molecules being separated. Maxwell is considered one of the biggest brains in nineteenth century science and the architect of the modern classical theory of electricity and magnetism, so you really need to listen when he proposes something, even in jest. This machine of such a fine pedigree, is called Maxwell's Demon, the demon being the cowboy sitting at the cutting-chute, letting out the fast (hot) ones while keeping the slow (cold) ones behind.
Maxwell postulated that what we know as temperature is really just the average velocity of the atoms within a given body, and since pressure and temperature are related by the gas law, we can control temperature by changing pressure. We see this every day in our air-conditioners where a pump compresses a gas making it hot and then when it is permitted to expand it grows cold. Unfortunately since we put pressure on all the molecules in the system and then let them go at once, we can't take advantage of Maxwell's demon.
However, we do have a system that has a parallel with Maxwell's idea. It's called dialysis and in this process, molecules of different sizes are either permitted or prevented from moving through a membrane from one side to the other. What a nice way to separate big molecules from small without doing anything except giving the small ones a place to go. Bump their heads against the membrane as long as they like and yet the big ones can't escape. Of course the small ones can go back and forth at will and so you can never get all of them to be on one side or the other of the membrane. But it's no big deal since the big ones are usually what you want and a few of the small ones hanging out is no problem. As might be expected, the characteristics of the membrane determine the results you get. A thick one with small spaces in the chicken-wire type structure, and the small molecules have almost as much difficulty passing through as the big ones, which means that you either have to heat up the system or be patient. But there is another way - pressure. By applying pressure on the side of the membrane that houses the molecules you want to separate, the system is speeded up, or said in a different way, if there is a differential pressure across the membrane, then diffusion can be affected. Which brings us to an application which Maxwell and his demon didn't envision.
Drinking water is not that important until you want some and all you have is salt water. And here we have reverse osmosis to provide the answer. Need I say solution. Put salt water, as example sea water, on one side of a membrane that has very tiny holes and is quite thick so it can sustain the high pressure drop across the membrane. Voila, you have drinking water. What if Maxwell's demon is lazy and expect you and your pumps to do al the work, the concept is the same and perhaps someday, he can be coaxed to work for free.
Strange as it may seem, the problem that has been bouncing about by the researchers in Utah and other places actually has a friend in the demon. It's just that he refuses to work when others are looking. But there is no need to give up on trying to get him to take a real job and go off well-fare.
In fact there is one school of thought that says that he already has been put to work on biological transmutations. Louis Kervran puts a different spin on the interrelationships between the elements. Not unlike those who start with the evolution of the universe as we know it, based on Hydrogen and the coalescing of the nuclei to form the other elements, Kervran assumes these reactions continue to occur and at temperatures encountered by living things. He envisions not only two nuclei being brought together in such a way that fusion occurs and a new element is brought into being with a nucleus of the added atomic weight. Likewise fission can occur in Kervran's models to produce lighter weigh elements. All this without a disruptive flash of energy. Of course on a "one atom at a time" basis, any release (or consumption) of energy, while localized would not be detrimental to the biological organism in which the transmutation occurs. That's his basis for publishing extensively in the past.
Here is a list taken from his book, of some of the transmutations;
(numbers following are the page from the book.)
Na + O = K 11
Na + H = Mg 54
Na = Li +O 65
Na + Mg = K 121
Na + C = Cl 91
Mg + Li = P 65
Mg + O = Ca 25
N(2) = CO 19
N + C = Cl 91
N(2) = C + O 85
N + Li = Cl 91
K + H = Ca 23
Si + C = Ca 36
B + H = C 54
P = C + F 66
P + H = S 67
P - Li = Mg 68
O (2) = S 87
C + Li = F 92
C + (Li O) = Cl 91
F + O = Cl 92
Fe - H = Mn
Cl = Si + Li 91
Cl = C + O +Li 91
Cl - O = F 92
Puzzle at this strange "nuclear" chemistry if you like but some of it appears plausible.
One of the great difficulties in proving or disproving Kervran's hypothesis is that he is talking about reactions occurring at the discrete atom level where energy levels and associations are all but unknown in biological systems.
Perhaps Maxwell's daemon is sitting within the folds of DNA, RNA or protein and from time to time when no one is looking flips the switch permitting nuclei to coalesce or at other times, flips the switch so that a favored nucleus (without immaculate conception) can give birth to not so identical twins.
If nothing more, Kervran's papers and books reacquaint the chemist with a side of the periodic table long forgotten. That is, the most useful information contained therein for most folks is the atomic mass of the different elements. Data so useful in synthesis, formulating and compounding those very essential chemicals we live with in everyday life. Which by the way Mother Nature does without effort and no need for an eye out for the Regulatory Agencies, in each and every cell in all living organisms (including man!).
We shall see, but in the mean time here's a bit of other unsettling news.
Contrary to what Dr. Bentley Glass and others tell us, "The basic laws are now known... The endless horizons no longer exist.", there's lots remaining to be discovered:
a) Constants that have been taken as, what else, constants appear to be changing (Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2002) example cited is the speed of light.
b) Bubble fusion may be a tempest in a teapot but when sound waves generate bubbles in a liquid and those bubbles implode a tremendous surge of energy is released, causing "perhaps" fusion of a heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, to yield another isotope of hydrogen, tritium, plus helium, a proton, hydrogen without an electron, and a burst of energy. C&EN, March 11, 2002.
c) Shades of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons's Cold Fusion, which by the way seems to be making its way back into the scientific press as perhaps not being a fluke after all. C&EN, December 24, 2001.
d) Transmutation of Species which is what Dr. Louis Kervran's work is all about was reviewed by Frederic B. Jueneman in R&D Magazine, August 2001 Biological Transmutations, Louis Kervran, Swan House Publishing Co., P.O. Box 638 Binghamton, N.Y. 13902
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