![]() The paper is orderly but the factory creates a lot of disorder to make them. A factory that makes neat stacks of paper.Entropy DecreasesĪh, but we can make entropy decrease in a region, but at the expense of increasing entropy elsewhere. The chance of randomly getting reduced entropy is so ridiculously small that we just say entropy increases.Īnd this is the main idea behind the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Now imagine a drop of water with over 5 x 10 21 atoms (and an atom is more complex than heads or tails). Now imagine 100 coins: the chance of all heads is less than 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001, which would be freaky. With just 6 coins we saw entropy naturally increase, but with some chance of getting lower entropy (HHHHHH has a 1/64 chance) The groups are called "macrostates", and because they may contain different numbers of microstates they are not equally likely. Each are equally likely, no matter how weird they may look. The value of ln(States) is now larger, so entropy has increased.Īny one state (imagine we froze time) is just as likely as any other state.īut entropy is about a group or class of states.īut groups can have very different numbers of statesĪny single state is called a "microstate". So the new states include the old states plus many many more. but most of the new states are going to be well spread out in the space available.other states might form the word "HI" (not likely!).some of those states have the gas back to the balloon shape again (not likely!).The balloon bursts and the gas spreads out into the box. There are many different states the gas can be in.īy "many" we mean a very very very large number. The gas molecules bounce around inside the balloon in different directions at different speeds. Here is a balloon of gas in a plastic box: In the real world there are many more particles, and each particle has many more states, but the same idea applies. ![]() This concept helps explain many things in the world: milk mixing in coffee, movement of heat, pollution, gas dispersing and more. They double each time, so 6 coins can have 2 6 = 64 statesĮach state has exactly the same chance, but let us group them by how many tails: We can see they are disorderly, but can we come up with a measure of how disorderly they are?įirst, how many possible states can they be in? To begin with they were very orderly, but now they are disorderly again and again. You shift the table a bit more and still get random heads and tails. ![]() "Huh, I wonder if I can get it to flip back again?", so you shift the table a bit more and get this: You move the table and the vibration causes a coin to flip to tails (T): You walk into a room and see a table with coins on it.
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