Re: Hot and Cold Energy Transfer

The basic answer to your answer is "no."

There's not really any thing called "cold" that can be added or removed; 
there is just thermal energy.  If something has a lot of it, we call 
it "hot"; something with little we call "cold."  When thermal energy flows 
from one place to another, we call that flow "heat."

One of the fundamental laws of physics is that heat only flows downhill; 
in other words the direction of flow of thermal energy is always from hot 
to cold (higher to lower temperature).  This is one way of stating the 
famous "Second Law of Thermodynamics."

One consequence of the Second Law is that the sort of process you propose, 
pulling energy out of something cold to make a relatively hot thing 
hotter, is not possible.  At least not possible without introducing 
something else into the system, like in a refrigerator or a heat pump 
where it takes energy to do the work of making a transfer of heat from 
cold to hot, the direction it does not naturally go.

I can recommend this site on the Web, written by a retired Professor, for 
a detailed but not too technical explanation of the Second Law of 
Thermodynamics: http://www.secondlaw.com

Allan Harvey
"Don't blame the government for what I say, or vice versa."