There Is a Free Lunch

There Is a a Free Lunch

Robert Neulieb Ph. D.

I sit by my radio listening to my favorite sophisticated station and then feel a cringe encompassing my whole body when I hear despite the 1^st Law of Thermodynamics that energy is something that can be produced and consumed.  Besides being correct 2^nd Law arguments provide more guidance and understanding. It reminds me that I have been cringing and even violently cringing that results in shuttering for numerous years starting when I submitted an article proposal on the uniqueness of the Sun-Earth energy interaction to a secondary school science education journal and received a rejection stating that there is no such thing as a free lunch.  That letter not only left me cringing and shuttering but sent me on a quest to find a free lunch.  Here is my report.

Eureka!  I found the ultimate free lunch and even the goose that lays golden eggs.  This exploration didn’t require arduous treks through deserts and jungles or even over frozen tundra or the highest mountains.  A stroll in almost any urban park would prove adequate.  A detailed understanding of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics aren’t required.  Most five or six year olds could understand the essence.  Compare photographs of the moon’s surface with that of the urban park and then explain to that five or six year old that the difference is sunlight captured by green plants and that because and only because sunlight comes from outside of the Earth it can add to our planet’s surface without a greater earthly sacrifice.  Bingo – free lunch and a continuous laying of proverbial golden eggs!

Now show that five or six year old photographs of strip mining, mountain top removal, tar sand extraction or denuded landscapes sacrificed for fracking sand and he will understand the difference between Earth based energy conversion and solar but won’t understand why.  Throw in ocean acidification, rising sea levels and extreme weather and he will most assuredly question adult sanity!  Why hurt the goose?

The real quest should be the question “Why does this gift mean so little to humans – at least adults.”

Over the last couple of years I have dispatched a deluge of emails and learned many lessons. While I feel that it is easy to explain I have been taught patience, that adult education can be a slow, oh so slow, process and above all there’s never a five or six-year old where you need them.