what is entropy in biology?
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entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness in a closed system.
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how it measures any examples?
Living organisms take in the energy they need to decrease their entropy, by eating food or photosynthesis, etc. If one wishes to apply the second law of thermodynamics, we must considered the whole universe as the system. When a biological organism absorbs energy and grows, thus increasing in complexity, work is done.
The concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics suggests that systems naturally progress from order to disorder.
Order can be produced with an expenditure of energy, and the order associated with life on the earth is produced with the aid of energy from the sun.
For example, plants use energy from the sun in tiny energy factories called chloroplasts. Using chlorophyll in the process called photosynthesis, they convert the sun's energy into storable form in ordered sugar molecules. In this way, carbon and water in a more disordered state are combined to form the more ordered sugar molecules.
In animal systems there are also small structures within the cells called mitochondria which use the energy stored in sugar molecules from food to form more highly ordered structures.
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Entropy is also used to mean disorganization or disorder. J. Willard Gibbs, the nineteenth century American theoretical physicist, called it "mixedupness." The American Heritage Dictionary gives as the second definition of entropy, "a measure of disorder or randomness in a closed system."
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