The First Law You can't win, you can only break even. You can't make something out of nothing. Energy is conserved. Entropy is a conserved quantity and must be 0 over a cycle. Engines that produce work must waste some heat by dumping it to a low temperature reservoir to balance entropy over the cycle.
Heat flows naturally from hot to cold.
There is a dissymmetry with respect to converting heat into work and work into heat. The entropy of the universe is increasing for natural spontaneous processes. This page is created and maintained by Trish Ferrett . If you have questions or comments, please send E-mail.