Hey. can you please answer the following questions? 1-A heat engine uses hot and
ID: 2102911 • Letter: H
Question
Hey. can you please answer the following questions?
1-A heat engine uses hot and cold reservoirs to do work. In any heat engine, part of the heat energy is turned into useful work, and part of it is simply transferred to the cold reservoir. Because of this, we often talk about the efficiency of a heat engine. How is efficiency defined, and what is the theoretical maximum value for a given set of reservoirs?
2- A very useful diagram for analyzing thermal cycles is a P-V diagram. Please look up what it is, and how one can use it to determine the work done by a heat engine.
Explanation / Answer
Heat, microscopically, is particle motion -- atoms vibrating, molecules bouncing off each other, or electrons "sloshing around" in an electrical conductor. Matter normally expands when it is heated; this expansion can be used to do useful work. In thermoelectric devices, such as those used to power deep space probes, heat is converted directly into electric current.
Any device, such as a heat engine -- or a fuel cell, which converts chemical energy into electricity -- can be described by its efficiency: the amount of energy input that is actually converted to useful output. Efficiency is normally stated as a percentage:
Efficiency = Energy out