"Maxwell's demon" meaning in English

See Maxwell's demon in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Maxwell's demons [plural]
Etymology: Named after physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) and demon, and probably from Greek daemon, a mythological being intermediate between gods and men. Etymology templates: {{named-after/list|physicist||||}} physicist, {{!}} |, {{lang|en|James Clerk Maxwell}} James Clerk Maxwell, {{named-after|en|James Clerk Maxwell|born=1831|died=1879|occ=physicist|wplink==}} Named after physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Head templates: {{en-noun}} Maxwell's demon (plural Maxwell's demons)
  1. A hypothetical creature created for a thought experiment. Maxwell’s demon, if it existed, would act as a sort of gate guard by sorting between higher-energy molecules and lower-energy molecules within an enclosed space. Because such a sorting process would tend to decrease entropy, it would violate the second law of thermodynamics. Related terms: information engine Translations (Hypothetical creature): dimoni de Maxwell [masculine] (Catalan), 麥克斯韋妖 (Chinese Mandarin), 麦克斯韦妖 (màikèsīwéiyāo) (Chinese Mandarin), Maxwellin demoni (Finnish), Maxwellscher Dämon [masculine] (German), Maxwell-démon (Hungarian), 맥스웰의 도깨비 (Maekseuwerui dokkaebi) (Korean), demonio de Maxwell [masculine] (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-Maxwell's_demon-en-noun-P7d3YyMP Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Maxwell's demon meaning in English (2.8kB)

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      "sense": "Hypothetical creature",
      "word": "Maxwell-démon"
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      "lang": "Korean",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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