What’s entropy and enthalpy and what do they have to do with ice melting?
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Entropy is the amount of disorder in a physical system. You have an ice cube swimming in a glass of water: There is some order, the ice cube is different from the liquid water, and so entropy is relatively low. Over time, the ice will melt leaving you with water at uniform temperature , and less order, as all the water molecules are now indistinguishable from each other. On average, in a closed system, entropy will always increase.
The enthalpy of a system is the sum of the energy E in the system (as heat, momentum, potential and so on) and its pressure times its volume pV. You can think of it as the energy it takes for the system to be created out of nothing (E is the energy the system needs to have and pV is the energy you need to “make space” for the system by displacing its surroundings).
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