What does the concept of entropy mean?
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It depends on who you ask. Ask an engineer who deals with thermodynamics you get a totally different answer to a physicist. When I had a thermodynamics course as part of my engineering degree we had one lesson dedicated ONLY to the concept of the term and discussion of it. Afterwards he had a rule about not talking about it, and just going with the terms of the equation.
In engineering entropy means that the potential difference changes. A bucket of ice in a room. As the ice melts it “takes energy” from the room. The entropy of the room decreased, but the entropy of the bucket has increased. If you consider the room and everything in it as one system, there has been no change in entropy.
While a physicist might say that increase in entropy means that structured or ordered system becomes more random.
If you ask an IT person, to them entropy means the amount of information a message is missing.
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