My brain can’t understand this at all. In an isolated system with cold molecules on one side and hot molecules on the other, I understand how the heat of this system balances with time, but it’s confusing to me that a system with a more evenly distributed temperature has increased randomness when it appears that there’s more order.
This feels like it should be simple, but my brain simply isn’t getting it, no matter how many analogies or examples I read. I’ve got to be missing something very simple, and that’s why it’s so frustrating that I don’t understand it. This is seriously stressing me out.
In: Physics
Entropy represents the disorder in a system – that has a VERY SPECIFIC, scientific meaning that is not the same as the every day meaning of the word.
Under that definition, ORDER represents structures with useful function. In terms of energy, it means energy that is available and able to be used to produce work. DISORDER represents energy that has no useful function. The more uniformly energy is distributed in equilibrium, the more disorder the system has – the system (*Of energy*) is not ordered, and not useful.
The distribution of the heat is orderly (in the every day meaning of the word). The system of energy, for the purposes of its use, is disordered because it cannot be used.
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