Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-b-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/paper-2/section-a/a2/solution

Treat the lake as a large thermal reservoir at , and take the copper's heat capacity constant over the cooling interval from . Although the actual cooling is irreversible, entropy is a state function, so its change can be calculated along a hypothetical reversible path:
The lake receives at constant temperature, giving
Therefore, neglecting other changes,
The positive total is the entropy generated by transferring heat across a finite temperature difference. The copper's entropy decreases, but the colder lake gains a greater amount.

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