ELI5-What is entropy?
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It’s the number of ways to arrange the components of something to get the same end result.
An end result that can only be achieved with relatively few combinations of individual pieces is low entropy. An end result that can be achieved with many different combinations of individual pieces is high entropy.
If the end result is that a collection of particles have a certain total energy, then that’s a high entropy state because there are many ways to assign positions and velocities to the particles to get the same total energy.
If the end result is that a collection of particles form an ice cube, that’s a lower entropy state because there are far fewer ways to arrange particles in an ice cube than in a puddle of water.
High entropy states tend to occur in nature because, by definition, there are more ways for them to occur.
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