The entropy is
if there is only one way of achieving a given
total energy.
Answers
Explanation:
There is yet another way of expressing the second law of thermodynamics. This version relates to a concept called entropy. By examining it, we shall see that the directions associated with the second law—heat transfer from hot to cold, for example—are related to the tendency in nature for systems to become disordered and for less energy to be available for use as work. The entropy of a system can in fact be shown to be a measure of its disorder and of the unavailability of energy to do work
Answer:
Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time, sometimes called an arrow of time. As one goes "forward" in time, the second law of thermodynamicssays, the entropy of an isolated system can increase, but not decrease. Thus entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from the future. In thermodynamic systems that are not closed, entropy can decrease with time, for example living systemswhere local entropy is reduced at the expense of an environmental increase (resulting in a net increase in entropy), the formation of typical crystals, the workings of a refrigerator and within living organisms.
Much like temperature, despite being an abstract concept, everyone has an intuitive sense of the effects of entropy. For example, it is often very easy to tell the difference between a video being played forwards or backwards. A video may depict a wood fire that melts a nearby ice block, played in reverse it would show that a puddle of water turned a cloud of smoke into unburnt wood and froze itself in the process. Surprisingly, in either case the vast majority of the laws of physics are not broken by these processes, a notable exception being the second law of thermodynamics. When a law of physics applies equally when time is reversed, it is said to show T-symmetry; in this case, entropy is what allows one to decide if the video described above is playing forwards or in reverse as intuitively we identify that only when played forwards the entropy of the scene is increasing. Because of the second law of thermodynamics, entropy prevents macroscopic processes showing T-symmetry.
When studying at a microscopic scale, the above judgements cannot be made. Watching a single smoke particle buffeted by air, it would not be clear if a video was playing forwards or in reverse, and, in fact, it would not be possible as the laws which apply show T-symmetry, as it drifts left or right qualitativelyit looks no different. It is only when you study that gas at a macroscopic scale that the effects of entropy become noticeable. On average you would expect the smoke particles around a struck match to drift away from each other, diffusing throughout the available space. It would be an astronomically improbable event for all the particles to cluster together, yet you cannot comment on the movement of any one smoke particle.
By contrast, certain subatomic interactions involving the weak nuclear force violate the conservation of parity, but only very rarely.[citation needed] According to the CPT theorem, this means they should also be time irreversible, and so establish an arrow of time. This, however, is neither linked to the thermodynamic arrow of time, nor has anything to do with the daily experience of time.