From owner-biophysics@net.bio.net Sun Jan 04 22:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!agate!howland.erols.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server5.netnews.ja.net!daresbury!not-for-mail From: Pentcho Valev Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: Counterexample against thermodynamics Date: 5 Jan 1998 10:46:46 -0000 Lines: 41 Sender: lpddist@mserv1.dl.ac.uk Distribution: bionet Message-ID: <68qdmm$er7@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> Original-To: biophys@dl.ac.uk In reply to Bryant Fujimoto Bryant, I find my activity more and more meaningless - I also suspect that the group is already bored to tears. Still let me give the counterexample you so much insist upon. The maximum work that can be extracted from the reaction ATP -> ADP + P /1/ is, according to thermodynamics, the negative if delta G = delta Go + RTln((ADP)(P)/(ATP)) /2/ This work is a fiction. Never, under any conditions, can this work be extracted. However, in this discussion, you have deliberately made the verification impossible. For quite a long time I have been trying, in accordance with textbooks and other people's opinions, to specify the conditions under which the work /2/ is done - the ATP system does the maximum work on another system, e.g. B -> C, when the coupled reaction ATP + B -> ADP + P + C /3/ is CLOSE TO EQUILIBRIUM - only then can the work production be regarded as (almost) REVERSIBLE. Imitating Lucasz Salwinski, you gave in one of your previous postings a simple and unambiguous answer - "No". Moreover, you explicitly recognized that you have no idea how a solute reaction can be carried out REVERSIBLY. In fact, this is tantamout to recognizing that you see no conditions under which the work /2/ can be done. This is exactly what I claim - one cannot even imagine, let alone create, conditions under which the work /2/ is done - this work is just fiction. I realize with horror that I am the only one interested in REAL work done under REAL conditions. If so, you are right - I am just ignorant - I simply do not know what thermodynamics is interested in. So please tell me - do you really believe that specifying the conditions makes no sense? That we should speak about the work done by the ATP system only in abstract terms, without caring of any energy transfer in any real reaction? If this is true science, I should obviously give up everything. Best regards, Pentcho .