sagamore Sagan

Entropy, the 2nd law, and that pesky lil arrow

It appears that we have touched on the significance of the the three subjects titling this post previously, however, I do feel its now time to really get into it.


Let us all agree that, according to everyday experience, an egg that has broken into the tiniest of pieces (a state of high entropy) can not.. or will not, at any point, un-break-gather its pieces, yolk and white up-making a whole egg once again (a state of low entropy). In addition to our "fool-proof" common experience, the second law of thermodynamics says that in an isolated, complex system, entropy always increases in forward time motion. Entropy, again, is the measure of disorder in a system. An egg with all its bits strewn about the floor is exceptionally more disordered than a whole egg, conveniently containing all its molecules in a tight, and orderly fashion.