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8. If a machine were more than 100% efficient, what would that mean? Is this possible?

Why not?

User Noumenon
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1 Answer

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Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

A machine that is more than 100% efficient would mean that it can produce more output power than the input power, without any energy loss. This would violate the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease, and that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter12

This is not possible because there is always some form of energy loss in any real machine, due to friction, heat transfer, or other factors. Even a hypothetical machine without friction, called an ideal machine, would not have any energy losses, so its output power would equal its input power, and its efficiency would be 1 (100%). However, such a machine does not exist in nature or in engineering practice12

Therefore, the maximum efficiency that any machine can achieve is given by the Carnot efficiency formula: eta=1−fracTc​Th​

User Gelly Ristor
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