ANSWERS: 3
  • Basically its the theory that every ordered system will become disordered, as indicated by the second law of thermodynamics. Ok science nerds (like myself!) I know there is more to this, so feel free to add/correct!
  • G'day Caffey4, Thank you for your question. According to Wikipedia, In physics, entropy (from Greek εντροπία "a turning toward," from εν- "in" + τροπή "a turning"), symbolized by S, is a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work.[3] It is a measure of the randomness of molecules in a system. Entropy is central to the second law of thermodynamics and the combined law of thermodynamics, which deal with physical processes and whether they occur spontaneously. I have attached sources for your reference. Regards Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy google definitions http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rls=HPAB,HPAB:2007-44,HPAB:en&defl=en&q=define:Entropy&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
  • This is not an easy question to answer. Basically stated entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. Technically it means "how much of the system's energy is not available to do work". There are more or less two types of entropy: classical and statistical Classical states than variable within a closed system quantities tend towards equalisation. A good example is placing half a pint of hot water into half a pint of cold water. The most probable result (indeed almost certain) is that the temperature will eventually tend to equalise throughout the system. Entropy in this sense measures how far this process has got. Statistical Entropy: The number of micro-combinations that will result in the overall system. It is mathematically defined by s=k * Ln(N) where s is entropy, k is Boltzmann's Constant and N is the number of microscopic combinations that will lead to the overall system's state. The Second Law Of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system entropy will increase. The analogy is the broken cup. A non-broken cup can only be arranged in a fairly small number of ways, it has a low entropy. If it breaks there are more ways you can arrange the pieces so the system becomes more disordered, i.e. has more entropy. This process given time would continue until the equilibrium point which given time would be complete decay and heat death. However if you put more energy into the system then the amount of energy available for work in the system increases and you can reduce the disorder in the system (glue the cup back together for example). In doing this though you have yourself lost energy available for work as you gave it to the cup in terms of spending the energy to fix it. Some of that energy will have been lost to heat as nothing is 100% efficient which means that the cup system does not contain 100% of the energy you put in in a state that is available for work. Given a system defined to be of you and the cup the total entropy has still increased. Hope that makes sense and helps :)

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