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Maxwell's demon

File:Maxwell's_demon.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ212397· pop 44· linked from 206 articles

Maxwell's demon

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thought experiment

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Vinony's link graph records 206 inbound references to Maxwell's demon, and connects out to temperature, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and Henry Adams.

Vinony files it under 1867 introductions, Fictional demons and James Clerk Maxwell.

Vinony links it to 42 Wikipedia language editions.

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Maxwell's demon
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Encyclopedic overview

Schematic figure of Maxwell's demon thought experiment

Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that appears to disprove the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. In his first letter, Maxwell referred to the entity as a "finite being" or a "being who can play a game of skill with the molecules". Lord Kelvin would later call it a "demon".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Maxwell's demon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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