46 Ratchet and pawl 46-1 How a ratchet works In this chapter we discuss the ratchet and pawl, a very simple device which allows a shaft to turn only one way. The possibility of having something turn only one way requires some detailed and careful analysis, and there are some very interesting consequences. ‘The plan of the discussion came about in attempting to devise an elementary explanation, from the molecular or kinetic point of view, for the fact that there is ‘a maximum amount of work which can be extracted from a heat engine. Of course we have seen the essence of Carnot’s argument, but it would be nice to find an explanation which is elementary in the sense that we can see what is happening physically. Now, there are complicated mathematical demonstrations which follow from Newton's laws to demonstrate that we can get only a certain amount ‘of work out when heat flows from one place to another, but there is great difficulty in converting this into an elementary demonstration. In short, we do not under- stand it, although we can follow the mathematics. In Carnot's argument, the fact that more than a certain amount of work cannot be extracted in going from one temperature to another is deduced from another axiom, which is that if everything is at the same temperature, heat cannot be converted to work by means of a cyclic process. First, let us back up and try to see, in at least one elementary example, why this simpler statement is true Let us try to invent a device which will violate the Second Law of Thermo- dynamics, that is, a gadget which will generate work from a heat reservoir with everything at the same temperature. Let us say we have a box of gas ata certain temperature, and inside there is an axle with vanes in it. (See Fig. 46-1 but take T, = T, = T, say.) Because of the bombardments of gas molecules on the vane, the vane oscillates and jiggles. All we have to do is to hook onto the other end of the axle a wheel which can turn only one way—the ratchet and pawl. Then when the shaft tries to jiggle one way, it will not turn, and when it jiggles the other, it will turn, Then the wheel will slowly turn, and perhaps we might even tie a flea ‘onto a string hanging from a drum on the shaft, and lift the flea! Now let us ask if this is possible. According to Carnot’s hypothesis, itis impossible. But if we just look at it, we see, prima facie, that it seems quite possible, So we must look more closely. Indeed, if we look at the ratchet and pawl, we see a number of complications. First, our idealized ratchet is as simple as possible, but even so, there is a pawl, land there must be a spring in the pawl. The pawl must return after coming off « tooth, so the spring is necessary. Another feature of this ratchet and pawl, not shown in the figure, is quite ‘essential, Suppose the device were made of perfectly elastic parts. After the pawl is lifted off the end of the tooth and is pushed back by the spring, it will bounce against the wheel and continue to bounce. Then, when another fluctuation came, the wheel could turn the other way, because the tooth could get underneath during the moment when the pawl was up! Therefore an essential part of the irreversibility ‘of our wheel is a damping or deadening mechanism which stops the bouncing. ‘When the damping happens, of course, the energy that was in the pawl goes into the wheel and shows up as heat. So, as it urns, the whee! will get hotter and hotter. ‘To make the thing simpler, we can put a gas around the whee! to take up some of the heat, Anyway, let us say the gas keeps rising in temperature, along with the wheel. Willit goon forever? No! The pawl and wheel, both at some temperature 46-1 46-1 How a ratchet works 46-2 The ratchet as an engine 46-3 Reversibility in mechanics 46-4 Irreversibility 46-5 Order and entropy Fig. 46-1 machine. The ratchet ond pawlT, also have Brownian motion, This motion is such that, every once in a while, by accident, the pawl lifts itself up and over a tooth just at the moment when the Brownian motion on the vanes is trying to turn the axle backwards. And as things get hotter, this happens more often. So, this is the reason this device does not work in perpetual motion, When the vanes get kicked, sometimes the pawl lifts up and goes over the end. But some- times, when it tries to turn the other way, the pawl has already lifted due to the fluctuations of the motions on the wheel side, and the wheel goes back the other way! The net result is nothing. It is not hard to demonstrate that when the temperature on both sides is equal, there will be no net average motion of the wheel. OF course the whee! will do @ lot of jiggling this way and that way, but it will not do what we would like, which is to turn just one way. Let us look at the reason, It is necessary to do work against the spring in ‘order to lift the pawl to the top of a tooth. Let us call this energy ¢, and let @ be the angle between the teeth. The chance that the system can accumulate enough energy, ¢, t0 get the pawl over the top of the tooth, is e~**?, But the probability that the pawl will accidentally be up is also e~*!*?. So the number of times that the pawl is up and the wheel can turn backwards freely is equal to the number of times that we have enough energy to turn it forward when the pawl is down, We thus get a “balance,” and the wheel will not go around. 46-2 The ratchet as an engine Let us now go further. Take the example where the temperature of the vanes is 7 and the temperature of the wheel, or ratchet, is T, and Tis less than T,, Because the wheel is cold and the fluctuations of the pawl are relatively in- frequent, it will be very hard for the paw! fo attain an energy ¢. Because of the high temperature 71, the vanes will often attain the energy ¢, so our gadget will go in one direction, as designed. We would now like to see if it can lift weights. Onto the drum in the middle wwe tie a string, and put a weight, such as our flea, on the string. We let L be the torque due to the weight. If Z is not too great, our machine will lft the weight because the Brownian fluctuations make it more likely to move in one direction than the other. We want to find how much weight ican lift, how fast it goes around, and so on. First we consider a forward motion, the usual way one designs a ratchet to run, In order to make one step forward, how much energy has to be borrowed from the vane end? We must borrow an energy e to lift the pawl. The wheel turns through an angle & against a torque L, so we also need the energy L6. The total amount of energy that we have to borrow is thus ¢ + £8. The probability that ‘we get this energy is proportional to e~*+#""T:, Actually, itis not only a ques- tion of getting the energy, but we also would like to know the number of times pet second it has this energy. The probability per second is proportional to e°740'7,, and we shall call the proportionality constant 1/r. It will cancel out in the end anyway. When a forward step happens, the work done on the weight is Le. The energy taken from the vane is € + L9, ‘The spring gets wound "up with energy ¢, then it goes clatter, clatter, bang, and this energy goes into heat. All the energy taken out goes to lift the weight and to drive the pawl, which then falls back and gives heat to the other side. Now we look at the opposite case, which is backward motion. What happens here? To get the wheel to go backwards all we have to do is supply the energy to lift the paw! high enough so that the ratchet will slip. This is still energy ¢. Our probability per second for the pawl to lift this high is now (I/r)e~**72, Our proportionality constant is the same, but this time kT shows up because of the different temperature, When this happens, the work is released because the wheel slips backward. It loses one notch, soit releases work L@, The energy taken from the ratchet system is ¢, and the energy given to the gas at T on the vane side is La + ¢, It takes a litte thinking to see the reason for that. Suppose the pawl has lifted itself up accidentally by a fluctuation. Then when it falls back and the spring 46-2Table 46-1 Summary of operation of ratchet and pawl. Forward: Need energy € + LB from vane. .”. Rate 1 -assoar, Takes from vane 9 + Does work a Gives to ratchet Backward: Needs energy « for pawl. .°. Rate = 1 gowkey Takes fom eich « teaser jesse wih sn ved Givestovane PH e+u If system is reversible, rates are equal, hence Heat to ratchet _ Heatfeom vane ~ i pushes it down against the tooth, there isa force trying to turn the wheel, because the tooth is pushing on an inclined plane. This force is doing work, and so is the force due to the weights. So both together make up the total force, and all the energy which is slowly released appears at the vane end as heat. (Of course it must, by conservation of energy, but one must be careful to think the thing through!) We notice that all these energies are exactly the same, but reversed So, depending upon which of these two rates is greater, the weight is either slowly lifted or slowly released. Of course, itis constantly jiggling around, going up for a while and down for a while, but we are talking about the average behavior. Suppose that for a particular weight the rates happen to be equal. ‘Then we add an infinitesimal weight to the string. The weight will slowly go down, and work will be done on the machine. Energy will be taken from the wheel and given to the vanes, If instead we take off a little bit of weight, then the imbalance is the other way. The weight is lifted, and heat is taken from the vane and put into the wheel. So we have the conditions of Carnot’s reversible cycle, provided that the weight is just such that these two are equal. This condition is evidently that (e+ L9/T, = 6/Ts, Let us say that the machine is slowly lifting the weight. Energy Q; is taken from the vanes and energy Qs is delivered to the wheel, and these energies are in the ratio (€ + L6)/e, If we are lowering the weight, we also have Q1/Qz = (e+ Le\/e. Thus (Table 46-1) we have Qi/Q2 = Tr/To, Furthermore, the work we get out is to the energy taken from the vane as L# is to L0 +6, hence as (Ty — T3)/T,. We see that our device cannot extract more work than this, operating reversibly. This isthe result that we expected from Carnor's argument, and the main result ofthis lecture. However, we ean use our device to understand a few other phenomena, even out of equilibrium, and there- fore beyond the range of thermodynamics. Let us now calculate how fast our one-way device would turn if everything were at the same temperature and we hung @ weight on the drum, If we puil very, very hard, of course, there are all kinds of complications. ‘The pawl slips over the ratchet, or the spring breaks, or something. But suppose we pull gently enough that everything works nicely. In those circumstances, the above analysis is right for the probability of the wheel going forward and backward, if we remember 463