Eli5: what is entropy?
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In technical terms entropy is the tendency of all ordered systems to proceed towards disorder. Now what that actually means can be explained less technically.
Let’s imagine we’re looking at a clear box full of 8 bouncy balls that are bouncing off the walls without stopping. The center line of that box has a big sharpie line draw around it. If we take a picture of the box at any single point in time there is most likely going to be 4 balls bouncing on each side of that line. Now let’s say we can move all the balls to one side of that line and start them bouncing again. We have introduced order into our disordered system. However over time entropy will take over. The balls will bounce off each other more often than they bounce off the walls and the balls will eventually end up evenly distributed inside the box again.
Now what does that mean in practical terms. Well energy can only travel one way. We burn coal to make electricity. So we’re taking the stores energy in coal and turning it into heat. That heat goes to generate power and gets vented off. So we have taken the highly compact energy of coal and spread it out as heat into the atmosphere. We can use that energy to cool things but we will never be able to remove more energy from the thing we’re cooking than the heat generated from burning that amount of coal.
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