Speaker
Description
We take inspiration from Feynman–Smoluchowski ratchet-and-pawl thought experiment to build experimentally a Maxwell's demon at human-size.
We use a centimeter blade shafted to a CC-motor. Then, the blade is immersed in a granular gas made of hundreds of millimeter steal beads. The gas stands for an out-of-equilibrium heat bath, and the blade stands for a 1D Brownian particle whose speed is measured by the voltage at the motor connectors.
In Feynman–Smoluchowski thought experiment, the blade is free to rotate in one direction but the ratchet-and-pawl prevent rotation in the other direction.
To that end, in our experiment, we plug a diode and a load on the CC-motor in order to exert back-action depending on the blade speed. This demon introduces an asymmetry in the Brownian motion of the blade that thus experiences a neat motion in one well-defined direction
We analyze both dynamical and statistical properties of the particle motion. and even measure a thermodynamical quantities such as work, heat or efficiency.
