The Brownian ratchet is a thought experiment about an apparent perpetual motion machine popularised by Richard Feynman in a physics lecture at the California Institute of Technology on May 11, 1962 as an illustration of the laws of thermodynamics. The simple machine, consisting of a paddlewheel and a ratchet, appears to be an example of a Maxwell's demon, able to extract useful work from random fluctuations in a system at thermal equilibrium. Feynman's detailed analysis showed why it cannot actually do this.

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