ELI5-What is entropy?
In: 1763
Imagine you have a big box of Legos. If all the Legos are the same color and shape, it’s easy to know what you have, right? There isn’t much surprise when you pull out a Lego piece because they’re all the same. This is like having low entropy – everything is very ordered and predictable.
But what if you have a box with many different colors and shapes of Legos? Now, every time you pull out a piece, it could be a surprise! You might get a red block, a blue wheel, or a yellow figure. This box has high entropy – it’s more disordered and unpredictable.
In physics, entropy is kind of like the Lego example. It’s a way to talk about how mixed up or unpredictable things might be in a certain situation. If things are really mixed up (like the box with all different Legos), we say it has high entropy. If things are very orderly and predictable (like the box with all the same Legos), it has low entropy.
And just like you might like to keep mixing up your Lego pieces to build new and different things, in nature, things tend to go from order to disorder. This is often what we mean when we talk about the ‘increase of entropy’ – things naturally get more mixed up over time.
Latest Answers