We propose a dynamical theory of how the chemical energy stored in a battery generates the electromotive force (emf). In this picture, the battery's half-cell acts as an engine, cyclically extracting work from its underlying ...

When a real fluid is expelled quickly from a tube, it forms a jet separated from the surrounding fluid by a thin, turbulent layer. On the other hand, when the same fluid is sucked into the tube, it comes in from all ...

We introduce the “leaking elastic capacitor” (LEC) model, a nonconservative dynamical system that combines simple electrical and mechanical degrees of freedom. We show that an LEC connected to an external voltage source ...

Engines are open systems that can generate work cyclically at the expense of an external disequilibrium. They are ubiquitous in nature and technology, but the course of mathematical physics over the last 300 years has ...

A solar cell is a heat engine, but textbook treatments are not wholly satisfactory from a thermodynamic standpoint, since they present solar cells as directly converting the energy of light into electricity, and the current ...

The literature on dynamical systems has, for the most part, considered self-oscillators (i.e., systems capable of generating and maintaining a periodic motion at the expense of an external energy source with no corresponding ...

The linear coupling of a rotating heat bath to a quantum field is studied in the framework of the Markovian master equation for the field's non-unitary time evolution. The bath's rotation induces population inversion for ...

We propose a model of the Earth’s torqueless precession, the “Chandler wobble,” as a self-oscillation driven by positive feedback between the wobble and the centrifugal deformation of the portion of the Earth’s mass contained ...

In the early 18th century, J. E. E. Bessler, known as Orffyreus, constructed several wheels that he claimed could keep turning forever, powered only by gravity. He never revealed the details of his invention, but he ...

We propose a microphysical theory of the triboelectric effect by which mechanical rubbing separates charges across the interface between two materials. Surface electrons are treated as an open system coupled to two baths, ...