Thermo.

About a year ago I entered into a cash-prize poetry contest that my engineering college sponsored. I had a small collection of poems that I'd already written, which I went through and selected from to make my 5-poem submission portfolio. I was mostly satisfied with the material I'd chosen...and yet I found myself wanting to write a new poem to submit. One just for this contest, and one specifically about engineering.

It didn't take too long to realize that the perfect way to do this was to convert the severe frustration (and ultimate relief) I'd recently had in my thermodynamics class in verse form.

I could try to be modest here, but to be honest, after I finished the poem, I thought for sure I'd written a winner, and that the judges (who I assumed would have engineering backgrounds) would eat it up and grant me an award. Alas, no such fortune was found.

Ah well, anyway, here it is. I'm still happy with it:

Thermo

I am the working fluid.

I am the working fluid and I am being spent.

What’s that, you say? I can’t be exhausted?

Something about conservation of mass?

The truth you know is flaky and frosted.

I may be water by three-quarters

But that doesn’t mean my body

Follows a textbook chart’s orders

In fact, my specific counterexamples

To this possibility are sufficiently ample

I’m certain my internal energy is not the same

As when I first started this twisted game

Of relying on my own gumption

To discover a problem’s necessary assumptions

And although the pressure of the task has remained constant

And increasing volumes of demands are repeated

I am certain this has not in itself

Resulted in any work being completed.

As I run in my state of madness

In circles through temperature-entropy space

I find there’s complete reversibility

But, alas, not a hint of grace

For those who can only take exams

At a quasi-equilibrium pace…

And so after a semester filled

With pistons tightly sealed in cylinders

And valves closed firmly on rigid tanks

I thought that I myself would never find a way out

And then you made the final do-able—thanks.