Reply to thread

Hi Guest: Check out our new article here: It Pays to Be an Early (Financial) Bird

Get Shadowing and a Virtual Clinical Education

About the Ads

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aldol16" data-source="post: 18978633" data-attributes="member: 727106">Friction and heat energy are different only in that friction is a force and heat energy is energy. So we're talking about Newtons versus Joules. But frictional forces produce heat energy - and that's the important piece of the puzzle here. The "heat" released from ATP hydrolysis is not really "heat" in the quotidian sense of the term. As chemists, we use "heat" in a very specific context. That is, as a thermodynamic quantity that characterizes the energy released from a reaction without regard to whether that energy is used to produce meaningful work or not. But let's take a step back. Energy can be broadly classified into two types - "ordered" energy and "disordered" energy. Work is the culmination of ordered energy, where energy is used to effect a certain purpose. Thermal heat is disordered energy, where that energy is dissipated without producing any work. Now, when ATP is hydrolyzed in your muscle, it produces "heat" in the chemical sense of the term. It would be more accurate to say that it releases energy. That energy is then used to produce movement - it's not simply released as thermal heat. If it were, that would be very wasteful. Nature has evolved over billions of years to very efficiently couple the energy released from ATP hydrolysis to produce work in the form of moving filaments. It's not a 100% efficient process, but it converges on it - nature has the advantage of billions of years. Now, the movement of those filaments produces friction, which produces thermal energy which is dissipated. So it's incorrect to say that ATP hydrolysis is what produces "heat" during shivering. So in terms of energy conservation, it's more useful to think of it this way. ATP has chemical energy stored up in the form of high energy phosphodiester bonds. During hydrolysis, that chemical energy is transformed into mechanical energy by driving the motion of the filaments. In other words, that energy is used to perform work. Then, as the filaments move, friction acts on them and that finally converts the mechanical energy into thermal energy, which cannot be used to do any more work and is dissipated into the environment. That's what happens when you "shiver."</blockquote>

This thread is more than 3 years old.

Your message may be considered spam for the following reasons:

Your new thread title is very short, and likely is unhelpful.
Your reply is very short and likely does not add anything to the thread.
Your reply is very long and likely does not add anything to the thread.
It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.
Your message is mostly quotes or spoilers.
Your reply has occurred very quickly after a previous reply and likely does not add anything to the thread.
This thread is locked.

Verification

Search

Search

Reply to thread

Search