Is anyone else hearing the word thermodynamics pronounced by Homer J?
It's tinting my ability to read this.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
41–50 of 74 posts
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#42> Don't put me down. I could have snowed you with differential equations and diagrams instead of what you see everyday. We're being practical and visual rather than going the math route, essential as that is in chemistry. > The big deal is that all types of energy spread out like the energy in that hot pan does (unless somehow they're hindered from doing so) They don't tend to stay concentrated in a small space. I am…
This is what confuses people. There is this universal law, but you already know about it. It's probability. Increasing Entropy is a result of probability. That's all it is. When you have a bunch of particles and you jostle the particles it is MORE probable for the particles to become spread out then it is to become concentrated in one corner. That probability is what is behind this mysterious force called entropy. Wh…
It makes even more sense when you take the law of large numbers into account. The scale we're experiencing most things on is /so/ far removed from the scale on which these probabilities are being expressed.
There are more molecules in a cup of water (on the order of 10^24) than there are cups of water in the ocean. If you have a cup of water's worth of matter, you aren't just rolling 10 dice (or even 1000 dice) and looking for mostly 6s. You're rolling a few septillion dice and hoping for a significantly non-normal distribution. It just isn't feasible.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#43Repeal the Second Law! Free Energy for Everyone!
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#44> Don't put me down. I could have snowed you with differential equations and diagrams instead of what you see everyday. We're being practical and visual rather than going the math route, essential as that is in chemistry. > The big deal is that all types of energy spread out like the energy in that hot pan does (unless somehow they're hindered from doing so) They don't tend to stay concentrated in a small space. I am…
This is what confuses people. There is this universal law, but you already know about it. It's probability. Increasing Entropy is a result of probability. That's all it is. When you have a bunch of particles and you jostle the particles it is MORE probable for the particles to become spread out then it is to become concentrated in one corner. That probability is what is behind this mysterious force called entropy. Wh…
> Why does probability seem to follow an arrow of time, it doesn't seem symmetrical like the rest of physics.
One cannot really oppose probability to "the rest of physics". Probability is not "a part of" physics. Probability is what we use to describe imperfect knowledge of a physical system - and we know more about the past than we do about the future.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#45There is also an interesting relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the cosmological principle (which says "the distribution of matter is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales"): The second law of thermodynamics says that the universe has an entropy gradient in the time dimension, while the cosmological principle says that the universe has no matter gradient in the spatial dimensions. So together t…
>merely called a "principle"
Merely a principle? In science principles are what mathematicians call Axioms. Not proven but taken as true because you have to start somewhere, and it is the only thing that makes sense.
The cosmological principle is the philosophical position that physics works the same everywhere. We haven't done physics experiments across the universe, so we can't call it a law because there is not enough experimental evidence.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#46> Don't put me down. I could have snowed you with differential equations and diagrams instead of what you see everyday. We're being practical and visual rather than going the math route, essential as that is in chemistry. > The big deal is that all types of energy spread out like the energy in that hot pan does (unless somehow they're hindered from doing so) They don't tend to stay concentrated in a small space. I am…
This is what confuses people. There is this universal law, but you already know about it. It's probability. Increasing Entropy is a result of probability. That's all it is. When you have a bunch of particles and you jostle the particles it is MORE probable for the particles to become spread out then it is to become concentrated in one corner. That probability is what is behind this mysterious force called entropy. Wh…
I don’t buy it. You can’t say entropy is probability and then say but we don’t know what probability really is. It’s both foundational to physics and computer science. I could say probability is really just entropy just as easily. I would go farther and say that time is entropy as we measure time by observing entropy.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what confuses people. There is this universal law, but you already know about it. It's probability. Increasing Entropy is a result of probability. That's all it is. When you have a bunch of particles and you jostle the particles it is MORE probable for the particles to become spread out then it is to become concentrated in one corner. That probability is what is behind this mysterious force called entropy. Wh…
I don’t buy it. You can’t say entropy is probability and then say but we don’t know what probability really is. It’s both foundational to physics and computer science. I could say probability is really just entropy just as easily. I would go farther and say that time is entropy as we measure time by observing entropy.
you don't buy it? This is foundational. This isn't something I'm making up. It's the formal definition of entropy.
https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:LabXchange:ac117....
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what confuses people. There is this universal law, but you already know about it. It's probability. Increasing Entropy is a result of probability. That's all it is. When you have a bunch of particles and you jostle the particles it is MORE probable for the particles to become spread out then it is to become concentrated in one corner. That probability is what is behind this mysterious force called entropy. Wh…
> Why does probability seem to follow an arrow of time, it doesn't seem symmetrical like the rest of physics. One cannot really oppose probability to "the rest of physics". Probability is not "a part of" physics. Probability is what we use to describe imperfect knowledge of a physical system - and we know more about the past than we do about the future.
No, probability is a mathematical game with axioms and theorems.
Why the rules of this game happens to describe systems where we have imperfect knowledge... nobody knows.
Another thing is all of these systems have probability travel in a single direction. Things with high probability are more likely to happen. If time were to go backwards, low probability events will start to spontaneously occur.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#49I could never wrap my head around the abstract concepts used in these explanations because they don't connect to what is actually happening at the atomic level. As far as I could tell the actual particles are undergoing a constant process of reducing the potential energy induced by force fields between them, which means everything is just jiggling all the time and spreading further and further apart. Heat is just som…
People overcomplicate the matter. The second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally very simple: things flow towards (or seek) a state of equilibrium. That's it. Entropy is just a measure of equilibrium. All the concepts are like you said, just some behavior exhibiting that.
Re: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t buy it. You can’t say entropy is probability and then say but we don’t know what probability really is. It’s both foundational to physics and computer science. I could say probability is really just entropy just as easily. I would go farther and say that time is entropy as we measure time by observing entropy.
you don't buy it? This is foundational. This isn't something I'm making up. It's the formal definition of entropy. https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:LabXchange:ac117... .
I think his point is that it is not clear why every microstate is equally probable.