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#187409 - 10/21/09 10:39 PM Foehnting away
Jackie Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 10392
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
A friend sent me a link to a Wikipedia article on Foehns. In it was a(nother) word I'd never heard of: adiabatic.

Acc'g. to AHD, it is: ADJECTIVE:

Of, relating to, or being a reversible thermodynamic process that occurs without gain or loss of heat and without a change in entropy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek adiabatos, impassable : a-, not ; see a- 1 + diabatos, passable ( dia-, dia- + batos, passable from bainein, to go; see gw- in Indo-European roots)


The wiki article (or rather, a link in it) says: Adiabatic heating or cooling of a gas results from pressure change. Work is done on or by the gas, but there is no heat transfer with the environment. Heat can be supplied to the gas by friction however. If an adiabatic process is frictionless too, the process is reversible and can be called isentropic.

Apparently it is pronounced addy-uh-BATtic.

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#187428 - 10/25/09 01:41 PM Re: Foehnting away [Re: Jackie]
dalehileman Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 07/10/05
Posts: 1773
Loc: Apple Valley, CA, USA
Jackie I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of response but my reaction is that it must involve a loss of some kind else the suggestion of perpetual motion
_________________________
dalehileman

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#187436 - 10/25/09 10:07 PM Re: Foehnting away [Re: dalehileman]
Jackie Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 10392
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
Thanks; and, that's all right, Dale. Sometimes there is; sometimes there ain't!

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