eli5 What is entropy and what are its biggest implications?
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Let me see if I can fill it in a little along side these excellent answers.
Entropy is very much tied into temperature. That’s why the physical formulae that define entropy are called the laws of *thermodynamics*.
Consider ice and water. Ice is a very regular, very ordered, crystalline structure. Like all solids, it is able to hold its shape without any outside assistance. Water, on the other hand, isn’t so well ordered. The molecules in it are just kind of floating around. They can hold their volume steady but not their shape.
So, ice would be considered a low entropy situation and water would be higher, right? And how did that entropy get into the system? With heat. As temperature goes up, so does entropy.
Even in the plate example, it took energy entering the system to break the plate and, theoretically, you could measure a very small increase in temperature when it broke. This is one of the things that causes certain kinds of mints to fluoresce when you bite them. This is why metal that’s going through a bending machine come out pretty warm. This is what drives the piezo electric effect. This is why the motion of hot liquids is so mind bogglingly complex.
Heat, for most purposes, is entropy and entropy is heat.
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