The laws of thermodynamics describe the energy in a closed system. The second law of thermodynamics cannot be escaped. It forms the basis of the physical world. In the world described by this law, useful energy will continue to be lost, but energy cannot be created or destroyed. (Editor’s note: the more disorderly the system, the greater its entropy value, and within a closed system, things always tend to be disordered from order to order, so the value of entropy must increase. This is the so-called law of entropy increase) If the lessons of this law are applied to the social world, a profitable enterprise can be achieved.
4. Inertia
Inertia shows that the object keeps its state of motion unchanged, that is, remains stationary or moves in a straight line at a constant speed, unless it is applied. This is the basic physical principle of movement. However, individuals, systems, and organizations also exhibit the same effect. Inertia allows them to minimize their energy use, but it can also cause them to be destroyed or corroded.
5. Friction and stickiness
Friction and viscosity both describe the difficulty of movement. Friction is the force that hinders relative motion or the tendency of relative motion on the contact surface, and viscosity measures how difficult it is for a fluid to slide through another fluid. The higher the viscosity, the greater the resistance. These concepts allow us to understand how the environment hinders our activities.
6. Speed
Velocity is not equal to speed. The two are sometimes confused. Velocity is speed plus vector: it measures how fast something gets somewhere. An object walking two steps forward and then back two steps can show a certain speed, but the speed is 0. Adding a vector to speed is the key difference we need to consider in real life.
7. Leverage
Most of the engineering miracles in the world are accomplished by leveraging. As Archimedes famously said: “Give me a fulcrum and a lever that is long enough, and I can move the earth.” With a small amount of input force, we can generate a lot of Large output power. Understanding where we can apply this model to the human world can be a source of great success.
8. Activation energy
Fire is nothing more than a mixture of carbon and oxygen, but forests and coal mines all over the world have not burned like this, because such a chemical reaction requires a critical level of “activation energy” input to start. Only two combustible elements are not enough to ignite.
9. Catalyst
The catalyst can initiate or maintain a certain