This art project consists of a generator with a crank attached. The generator is attached to an electrical heater, so as the crank is turned the heater's output increases. The public is invited to turn the crank as much as they like.
There's also a mechanical display on the device that reads "Users of this device have generated a total of XXXXXXXX joules/kelvin of entropy, and have hastened the heat death of the universe by XXXXXXXX * 10^-5000 seconds."-- ytk, Jun 09 2012 Energy expender-- rcarty, Jun 09 2012 Good grief, I literally just posted something very like this. Total coincidence. Sorry, ytk.-- Phrontistery, Jun 09 2012 Chaos begets order. An important monument, lest we forget.-- Alterother, Jun 09 2012 I think this is a great idea, but the 'XXXXXXX' bits lack interest. Have you considered putting numbers there instead?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 09 2012 I think they were meant to be Roman numbers, [Max]?-- UnaBubba, Jun 09 2012 They are numbers, [Max]. They're just in base 36, and the machine happens to have already been used quite a bit at this point. In fact, with just 161,206,280,427 (base 10) more J/K generated the display will roll over to 00000000.-- ytk, Jun 09 2012 The problem is that the number of joules would only be an estimate, depending on the size and gastronomic efficiency of the user.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 10 2012 //the 'XXXXXXX' bits lack interest.//
Have you never seen Japanese government bonds before?-- pertinax, Jun 13 2012 The display shouldn't say "Users of this device have generated..." - "generated" sounds dangerously like they're creating new energy, rather than converting it from chemical energy into kinetic or heat energy.-- hippo, Jun 13 2012 //"generated" sounds dangerously like they're creating new energy//
Maybe "squandered"?-- Wrongfellow, Jun 13 2012 Some self-promoting artists from an opposing school could punk the project by insinuating a bunch of lizard-eggs such that they are incubated by the constant stream of heat generated by the heater.
While the original artists are busy making up some neo-post-modern bollo.. I mean, releasing a cultural and semantic context-narrative, to the assembled world media, the lizards could be observed to hatch, at which point someone in a hat could leap out from behind a blank canvas/urinal and announce "Ha! You all thought you were increasing the universe's entropy? Ha! LOOK AT THE LIZARDS!"-- zen_tom, Jun 13 2012 There are times, [zen_tom], when you and [theleopard] give every indication of having come from another planet.-- UnaBubba, Jun 13 2012 Why thankyou (I think), that's very kind. I hope [theleopard] won’t mind me divulging that we are in fact, originally from Bournemouth.-- zen_tom, Jun 13 2012 //"generated" sounds dangerously like they're creating new energy//
It's the entropy they're generating, not energy.-- ytk, Jun 13 2012 You hear so much about entropy. Entropy entropy entropy. It ceases to have much meaning. But Enthalpy - that is something else. Where do you hear about Enthalpy? Barely anywhere. It is like polically correct phlogiston. It has that thalpy freshness! If this idea could be retrojiggered to have more Enthalpy it would have my bun.-- bungston, Jun 13 2012 I've been feeling a bit enthalpy lately, to tell you the truth.-- ytk, Jun 13 2012 Gibb's Free Energy = Enthalpy - Temperature x Entropy, right? There must be a joke in there somewhere, but it escapees me.-- sqeaketh the wheel, Jun 13 2012 The acceptably multiethnic ladies and recently-hired female-to-male transgendered individual down at the Heathen Institute for Inadvisably Applied Science & Singular Plurality inform me that if the crank handle, or perhaps the cooling vanes, were painted with Titanium Oxide enamel, the Entropy Machine could be made up to 0.006% more enthalpic and would produce sevenfold the current volume of phlogistonic atmospherons.-- Alterother, Jun 13 2012 Are they the ones with the Birkenstock sandals, crooked teeth, frizzy hair and flat, shapeless breasts, [Alter]?-- UnaBubba, Jun 13 2012 I hate that Singular Plurality. There is never enough to go around, and people start scraping the enamel off of stuff.-- bungston, Jun 14 2012 random, halfbakery