"A simple rubber band can be the heart of an engine converting heat into electrical energy http://labman.phys.utk.edu/phys221core/modules/m10/images/rubber.gif. We can use heat to make the rubber band contract. It then can lift water, converting heat
into gravitational potential energy. This gravitational potential energy of the water can be converted into electrical energy with the help of a turbine generator. After the load had been lifted, we let the rubber band cool down. It then has the same
internal energy it had before we started the process. We can repeat this process over and over again. This certainly is a very inefficient engine. It wastes a large amount of heat. Can we make the process of converting heat into other forms of energy
more efficient?" http://labman.phys.utk.edu/phys221core/modules/m10/first_law.html

Yes, the process of converting heat into work can be made 100% efficient if ISOTHERMAL heat engines are used. They are commonplace - e.g. pH-sensitive polymers can do work at the expense of ambient heat as they contract cyclically and isothermally. By
adding and removing hydrogen ions (H+) one can extract work from pH-sensitive polymers - see

Figure 4 here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1367611/pdf/biophysj00645-0017.pdf

and

Figure 16A here https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jp972167t.

(These are perhaps the only illustrations of isothermal heat engines in the scientific literature, and the fact that the devices are heat engines is by no means clear from the texts.)

Adding and removing H+, per se, consumes no work if done QUASISTATICALLY. This means that the work lost e.g. in adding is compensated by the work gained in removing, and the net work involved is zero. So lifting weights is the net work in the whole
process. The second law of thermodynamics is clearly violated.

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Scientists are mesmerized by the floating water bridge

https://youtube.com/watch?v=U7PeezOzprE

but try not to see of the violent water flows

https://youtube.com/watch?v=17UD1goTFhQ

which can convert ambient heat (no other source of usable energy) into work, e.g. by rotating waterwheels, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Water in an electric field automatically becomes a perpetual-motion machine of the second kind - this particular violation of the second law was noticed and immediately forgotten in 2002 (scientists have been in crimestop mode since then):

"A deviation from the second law of thermodynamics has been demonstrated experimentally for the first time. [...] To test the idea, the researchers put about 100 latex beads - each 6.3 µm across - into a WATER-FILLED CELL, which was placed on the stage
of a microscope. The researchers focused a laser onto one of the beads, which induced a dipole moment in the bead and drew it towards the most intense region of the ELECTRIC FIELD in the laser beam." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2002/jul/16/
small-systems-defy-second-law

Nature: "Second law broken. Researchers have shown for the first time that, on the level of thousands of atoms and molecules, fleeting energy increases violate the second law of thermodynamics. [...] They found that over periods of time less than two
seconds, variations in the random thermal motion of water molecules occasionally gave individual beads a kick. This increased the beads' kinetic energy by a small but significant amount, in apparent violation of the second law." http://www.nature.com/
news/2002/020722/full/news020722-2.html

Scientific American: "Second Law of Thermodynamics Violated. [...] ...the water molecules interacted with the bead in such a way that energy was transferred from the liquid to the bead. These additional kicks used the random thermal motion of the water
to do the work of moving the bead, in effect yielding something for nothing. For periods of movement lasting less than two seconds, the bead was almost as likely to gain energy from the water as it was to add energy to the reservoir, the investigators
say." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/second-law-of-thermodynam/

George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest
arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

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There is a simple and unambiguous formulation of the second law of thermodynamics suggested by Sadi Carnot himself (see the quotation below). If heat is to be cyclically converted into work (that is, if a heat engine is to be operative), then

"a cold body is necessary".

In other words, heat cannot be cyclically converted into work (a heat engine will not be operative) unless some temperature gradient is present: a hot body, source of heat, and a cold body, receiver of heat, must be available. Only two-temperature heat
engines are possible; isothermal (one-temperature) heat engines don't exist. This false claim is universally taught nowadays:

"A necessary component of a heat engine...is that two temperatures are involved" http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/Heatengines.html

The problem is that in 1824 Carnot deduced "a cold body is necessary" from a postulate that eventually turned out to be false:

Carnot's (false) postulate: Heat is an indestructible substance (caloric) that cannot be converted into work by the heat engine.

Unpublished notes written in the period 1824-1832 reveal that, after realizing that his postulate was false, Carnot found "a cold body is necessary" implausible:

Sadi Carnot, REFLECTIONS ON THE MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT, p. 225: "Heat is simply motive power, or rather motion which has changed form. It is a movement among the particles of bodies. Wherever there is destruction of motive power there is, at the same time,
production of heat in quantity exactly proportional to the quantity of motive power destroyed. Reciprocally, wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of motive power." p. 222: "Could a motion (that of radiating heat) produce matter (
caloric)? No, undoubtedly; it can only produce a motion. Heat is then the result of a motion. Then it is plain that it could be produced by the consumption of motive power, and that it could produce this power. All the other phenomena - composition and
decomposition of bodies, passage to the gaseous state, specific heat, equilibrium of heat, its more or less easy transmission, its constancy in experiments with the calorimeter - could be explained by this hypothesis. But it would be DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN
WHY, IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTIVE POWER BY HEAT, A COLD BODY IS NECESSARY; why, in consuming the heat of a warm body, motion cannot be produced." http://www.nd.edu/~powers/ame.20231/carnot1897.pdf

Generally, a cold body is not necessary, which means that the second law of thermodynamics is false. The cold body is only TECHNOLOGICALLY necessary as it makes heat engines fast-working. Heat engines working under isothermal condition (in the absence of
a cold body) are commonplace but are too slow and impuissant to be of any technological importance. Except, perhaps, for the case in which water is placed in an electric field. The non-conservative force (pressure) that emerges in the bulk of water
produces vigorous flows able to convert ambient heat into work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17UD1goTFhQ

Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Melba Phillips, Classical Electricity and Magnetism, pp.115-116: "Thus the decrease in force that is experienced between two charges when they are immersed in a dielectric liquid can be understood only by considering the effect
of the PRESSURE OF THE LIQUID ON THE CHARGES themselves." http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Electricity-Magnetism-Second-Physics/dp/0486439240?tag=viglink21401-20

"However, in experiments in which a capacitor is submerged in a dielectric liquid the force per unit area exerted by one plate on another is observed to decrease... [...] This apparent paradox can be explained by taking into account the DIFFERENCE IN
LIQUID PRESSURE in the field filled space between the plates and the field free region outside the capacitor." http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/jk1/lectures/node46.html

Tai Chow, Introduction to Electromagnetic Theory: A Modern Perspective, p. 267: "The strictly electric forces between charges on the conductors are not influenced by the presence of the dielectric medium. The medium is polarized, however, and the
interaction of the electric field with the polarized medium results in an INCREASED FLUID PRESSURE ON THE CONDUCTORS that reduces the net forces acting on them." http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-To-Electromagnetic-Theory-Perspective/dp/0763738271

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