BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


What's entropy?

 
 
_pin
06:59 / 01.02.02
Please? This one's bveen bugging me, and the only person I know who has a hope of explaining it to me managed to sum up enough language skills to say "Um... "
 
 
Wombat
07:13 / 01.02.02
Amount of randomness assosiated with a system.
Drop a cup entropy increases.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
07:41 / 01.02.02
Entropy measures - with a ratio - the tendency of energy to spread out, to diffuse, to become less concentrated in one physical location or one energetic state.

Entropy is a measure of the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy doesn’t predict the speed of something happening, but it shows the direction and a quantity for the tendency of every chemical or physical event to happen on this earth (and maybe for every one in the whole universe).

Pulled from this page... isn't the change in entropy often used to decribe the idea that the universe is slowing down/cooling down?
 
 
Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?
08:40 / 01.02.02
Or, to use the words of the Hawkman:

Entropy, how can I explain it? I'll take it frame by frame it,
to have you all jumping, shouting saying it.
Let's just say that it's a measure of disorder,
in a system that is closed, like with a border.
It's sorta, like a, well a measurement of randomness,
proposed in 1850 by a German, but wait I digress.
"What the fuck is entropy?", I here the people still exclaiming,
it seems I gotta start the explaining.

You ever drop an egg and on the floor you see it break?
You go and get a mop so you can clean up your mistake.
But did you ever stop to ponder why we know it's true,
if you drop a broken egg you will not get an egg that's new.

That's entropy or E-N-T-R-O to the P to the Y,
the reason why the sun will one day all burn out and die.
Order from disorder is a scientific rarity,
allow me to explain it with a little bit more clarity.
Did I say rarity? I meant impossibility,
at least in a closed system there will always be more entropy.
That's entropy and I hope that you're all down with it,
if you are here's your membership.

Chorus
You down with entropy?
Yeah, you know me! (x3)
Who's down with entropy?
Every last homey!

Verse 2
Defining entropy as disorder's not complete,
'cause disorder as a definition doesn't cover heat.
So my first definition I would now like to withdraw,
and offer one that fits thermodynamics second law.
First we need to understand that entropy is energy,
energy that can't be used to state it more specifically.
In a closed system entropy always goes up,
that's the second law, now you know what's up.

You can't win, you can't break even, you can't leave the game,
'cause entropy will take it all 'though it seems a shame.
The second law, as we now know, is quite clear to state,
that entropy must increase and not dissipate.

Creationists always try to use the second law,
to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!
That, in a nutshell, is what entropy's about,
you're now down with a discount.

Chorus

 
 
Sauron
10:02 / 01.02.02
That's superb. He needs to do a school tour.
 
 
Bill Posters
10:24 / 01.02.02
Thanks a lot people, this has really helped a physics dummy out!

[ 01-02-2002: Message edited by: Bill Posters ]
 
 
rizla mission
13:02 / 01.02.02
I've recently been tearing myself apart (well .. not quite) trying to figure out the correct definition of entropy.

I'd always assumed it was:

The process by which an odered system gradually runs down and collapses when no new elements are added.

Which fits in nicely which all kinds of twisted pro-chaos theories largely inspired by the Jerry Cornelius books..

But then someone told me they thought it was:

The process by which an ordered system always inclines towards chaos unless the order is frequently renewed.

Which sounds more likely to be scientifically correct, but comes from a pro-order perspective and buggers up all my theorising..
 
 
Persephone
16:13 / 01.02.02
I had always heard the latter; but you could easily see that as pro-chaos, as well. Particularly if you see chaos as a highly complex sort of order that continually reasserts itself over the painfully (to it) simple order that humans understand and try to impose.
 
 
Bear
18:31 / 01.02.02
Glint where did you see the word, this is one of those weird chaos moments.. I just did a little internet demon name maker, a jokey kinda thing and it told me me name wa Bourulx, Demon Warrior of Entropy - wasn't sure what it meant and remembered noticing this thread, strange
 
 
Jack Fear
01:51 / 02.02.02
Hate to belabor the obvious, but did no one think to use the Dictionary?
 
 
Persephone
02:16 / 02.02.02
Didn't have the energy.
 
 
Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?
23:30 / 02.02.02
"Renewed" - open and closed systems, natch.
 
 
rizla mission
13:44 / 04.02.02
Is it just me, or are definitions 2. and 4. in that there dictionary link completely incompatible?
 
 
Polly Trotsky
03:34 / 05.02.02
It's just you, Riz. Universal uniformity is the ultimate expression of randomness. Wrapping your head around that one is one of the steps to inner peace. Whether the universe may be represented as a closed system is undecided.
 
 
grant
16:53 / 05.02.02
Think of it in terms of a solar system (an ordered system) versus a nebula (the floating dust of randomness).
 
  
Add Your Reply