Kent William Mayhew
Kent William Mayhew | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Known for | thermodynamics, phase change, interfaces, nucleation theory, earth sciences, cosmology, climate change, self |
Kent William Mayhew is a Canadian independent researcher based in Ottawa, Ontario, who works in the field of thermodynamics. He is a dissident scientist who challenges the conventional understanding of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, proposing an alternative framework that he calls the "New Thermodynamics."
Biography
Mayhew resides in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and pursues his research as an independent investigator outside of a formal academic institution. He has published papers in peer-reviewed journals including Physics Essays, Progress in Physics, and the European Journal of Applied Physics, and has authored several self-published books outlining his ideas.
Work
Mayhew's work centers on a re-examination of classical thermodynamics, phase change, interfaces, and nucleation theory. He argues that useful systems near the Earth's surface perform irreversible work (PdV) onto the surrounding atmosphere, which he identifies as the reason most processes are not reversible. On this basis he contends that this irreversibility has, in his view, nothing to do with entropy or the second law, which he holds was written for isolated systems and therefore does not apply to typical systems at the Earth's surface.
He has proposed that expanding systems perform what he terms "lost work," an irreversible energy transfer from the expanding system into the surrounding atmosphere, and has used free-expansion experiments to argue that increasing entropy cannot, in his framework, account for such lost work. In this context he describes entropy as a mathematical contrivance. He has also written on nucleation theory and latent heat, deriving relations in which the work involved in nucleation processes depends on both volume and pressure change across a curved tensile layer. His writings extend these ideas to earth sciences, cosmology, and climate change.
His concept that expanding systems do work onto the atmosphere was first published in the journal Physics Essays in 2015.
Books
- Changing Our Perspective: Part 1: A New Thermodynamics (2015)
- New Thermodynamics: Say No to Entropy (2018)
- New Thermodynamics: Untangling Entropy's Web: Treatise on Global Warming (2020)
External links
- A New Thermodynamics — official website
- Kent W. Mayhew on Academia.edu