![]() If you roll 6 dice, there's only one way you can get a total of 36: every die is a 6. If entropy is a measure of disorder, then 'order' is also related to the number of microstates-the number of different ways a system can be in a given state. So we see china plates shatter into lots of pieces when dropped on a concrete floor, but we never see those pieces spontaneously jump into the air and re-form themselves into an unbroken plate.Įntropy is dependent on the number of microstates. In our universe, systems always tend naturally towards states of greater entropy as time goes by. The random deck of cards has high entropy, which becomes low entropy when you sort them out again.īut that entropy reduction required the expenditure of work, which produced an increase of entropy somewhere else in the process of furnishing that work. The sorted deck has low entropy, which becomes high entropy when you shuffle them randomly. If you dropped a whole randomly-shuffled deck of cards onto the floor and then scooped them all up, it is extremely unlikely that they would assemble themselves into that sorted order.įurthermore if you dropped the sorted deck onto the floor, it is extremely likely that after you scooped up all the cards you would find them all scrambled up, out of order. This deck has a lot of order built into it. Imagine a deck of playing cards in which each suit is sorted out and all the cards in each suit arranged in descending order. (How this plays out at the scale of the entire universe is beyond my experience.Here is a slightly different take on this. Since the galaxy is made of stars, I guess you could say "the entropy reversing mechanism would be within galaxies". So yes, entropy can occur at the nuclear scale, in a star. So the local decrease in entropy of life on Earth (or sorting a bag of rice) is far exceeded by the increase in entropy of the Sun. By the time you have iron nuclei, you can't get any more energy out of them by fusion. Other energy is lost in that if you try to fuse two Helium nuclei into a Beryllium nucleus, you don't release nearly as much energy. But in the process, access to that energy is lost - some is lost in the form of neutrinos, which fly away into space. The Sun gets its energy from nuclear fusion - turning hydrogen into helium, producing energy. But it does this by consuming energy from external source - usually light from the Sun, if you trace it back far enough. ![]() In the case of the Earth, you could say the life is in the business of decreasing its own entropy. However, this energy must come from some source considered as a whole system, the entropy increases over a long time, even though some parts of it decrease (temporarily and locally). It is possible to reverse entropy on a local scale (like a bag of dropped rice, or life on the planet Earth) by applying additional energy from outside the system. If JP's painting turned out exactly as he had planned in his mind, then the entropy could be said to be minimal. I guess it would, only with different statistics. I think you're getting defensive about the tidiness of you desk drawer.ĭunno whether thermodynamics can be applied to nuclear situations. ![]() ![]() Look at a book on statistical thermodynamics it's part of the explanation of these things. Both actions would require energy to achieve, and wouldn't occur by chance (V. The reconstructed pattern would have just as much information introduced (order) to it as if you lined them up into regular rows. Separating the fast molecules from the slow molecules (go on - try) would be the equivalent of re-sorting out your grains. Spilling rice is, essentially, increasing entropy because getting them back in the jar would involve energy being put in. When molecules of a hot gas mix with molecules of a cold gas, the overall entropy has increased you've mixed things up. (Statistics isn't subjective and entropy applies to information).Īctually, that's precisely what's going on. ![]()
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