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
The whole idea of using the word disorder to describe entropy does have some criticism. I prefer to think of entropy as how easy energy is to use to do stuff. That’s mostly what “orderly” really means.
The same total energy can be in two nearly identical systems, but the one with high entropy can’t be used to do stuff. E.g., a heat gradient (one cold side, one hot side) is an ingredient for a heat engine. Engines perform work. You can use the energy to power a pump, or move an object (assuming you build something to use a heat engine).
In contrast, turning the energy of a cloud with the same temperature everywhere into useful work is difficult. Can’t make a heat engine! You’d have to put EXTRA work just to get energy out of it. E.g., splitting atoms in the gas cloud (you’d waste more energy than you got in return).
Orderly systems, aka systems that require complexity and organization, like life, require useful energy to exist. E.g., your body needs to gather nutrients in specific places. Higher entropy would be those nutrients being evenly distributed everywhere instead of where they need to be. Nutrients being where they need to be is orderly. Your body uses energy to fight entropy and move nutrients where they need to be.
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