ELI5-What is entropy?

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ELI5-What is entropy?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Entropy is often defined as the measure of disorder of a system, but this definition is misleading because the universe could not care less about the human concept of order. Order in this case has more to do with the ability to change: when entropy is maximum no change is possibile and the system ~~is out of energy~~ energy is evenly distributed. Also, the information needed to describe the system is at its maximum.

So, I always thought of entropy to actually measure the ever-decreasing ability of the universe to change. If the process cannot be reversed, the final fate of the universe will be a cold and dark immutability.

Entropy also gives us the arrow of time, but this is another topic altogether.

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