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How To Understand Entropy

Education : Physics

One of the harder concepts to get your head round when studying physics is that of entropy.

Entropy is defined most succinctly as:

"A measure of the disorder of a system"

The entropy of the world is always increasing, but why should this be so? The easiest analogy to use is to think of energy dispersal as something going from a state of 'order', e.g. a tidy house or library, to one of 'disorder'.

Imagine a library on the day it opens - at first, very neat and orderly, all books in the right place.

Then, after a few months as people come and go, borrow books, leave then out, put them back in the wrong place, then the disorder of the system increases. Similarly with your house - it gets less and less tidy, less ordered, over time.

This is the basic idea with entropy - the disorder of a system increases over time.


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By: Stephen

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