The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be changed from one form to another (Devlin, 1997, 220). The total amount of energy and matter in the universe remains constant: it merely changes from one form to another. For example, the chemical energy in glucose is converted by glycolysis to the chemical energy ATP.
The second law of thermodynamics states "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state" (Devlin, 1997, 220). This concept is referred to as entropy: entropy is a measure of disorder. For example, once the energy locked in a carbohydrate is converted to kinetic energy, the organism will get no more energy until more energy is put into the system. During energy transfer, some energy is dissipated as heat. Cells are not disordered, and so their entropy is low. Entropy takes over when organisms cease to take in food and die.
As a human being, I do not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because every cell in my body remains organized and functional. If I broke the 2nd law of thermodynamics, my cells would disintegrate and I would die.
ATP consists of an adenosine molecule with three phosphate groups attached to the C5 of the carbon ring of adenosine (Devlin, 1997, 218-223). The ATP molecule is a purine nucleotide in which the adenine is attached in a glycosidic linkage to D-ribose. The three phosphate groups are esterified onto the C5 position of the ribose moiety in phosphoanhydride bonds. The two terminal phosphoryl groups are involved in the phosphoric acid anhydride bonding.
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O - P - O - P - POCH2 Adenosine
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O O O H ? ? H
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