Brownian ratchet (English, noun)
expansion: Brownian ratchet (plural Brownian ratchets)
Senses:
topics: natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: An apparent perpetual motion machine, the subject of a thought experiment, that would consist of a tiny paddle wheel and a ratchet, and might seem to be able to extract useful work from random fluctuations (heat) in a system at thermal equilibrium, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
Forms:
form: Brownian ratchets
tags: plural