What is entropy in physics. Entropy in our life. Dealing with Maxwell's demon

Woody Allen's heroine Whatever Works defines entropy like this: it's hard to shove back into a tube. toothpaste... She also explains in an interesting way the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, another reason to watch the film.

Entropy is a measure of disorder, chaos. You invited your friends to a New Year's party, tidied up, washed the floor, laid out a snack on the table, arranged drinks. In short, they put everything in order and eliminated as much chaos as they could. This is a low entropy system

What is entropy in simple words: a definition in which areas this term is used. Clear examples of entropy in life.

You all can probably imagine what happens to the apartment if the party is a success: complete chaos. But in the morning you have a system with high entropy at your disposal.

In order to put the apartment in order, you need to tidy up, that is, spend a lot of energy on it. The entropy of the system has decreased, but there is no contradiction with the second law of thermodynamics - you added energy from the outside, and this system is no longer isolated.

One of the variants of the end of the world is the thermal death of the universe due to the second law of thermodynamics. The entropy of the universe will reach its maximum and nothing else will happen in it.

In general, everything sounds rather dull: in nature, all ordered things tend to destruction, to chaos. But then where does life come from on Earth? All living organisms are incredibly complex and orderly and somehow struggle with entropy their entire lives (although in the end it always wins.

Everything is very simple. Living organisms in the process of life redistribute entropy around themselves, that is, they give up their entropy to everything they can. For example, when we eat a sandwich, we turn a beautiful ordered bread and butter into what is known. It turns out that we gave our entropy to the sandwich, but in the general system the entropy did not decrease.

And if we take the earth as a whole, then it is not a closed system at all: the sun supplies us with energy to fight entropy.

Entropy psychology.

Entropy - a way of interaction between a person and a social environment is determined by the fact that the social environment, on the one hand, and the personality, on the other, can include entropic and negentropic tendencies, and their certain ratio forms combinatorially possible modes of interaction; their wide range makes it possible to go beyond the limited definition of personality as a stable system operating in changing environmental conditions.

If we take the axis “personality - social environment” that is invariant in our conceptual apparatus and imagine its mutual rotation with the axis “entropy-negentropy”, which contains the answer to the question “how is the interaction going?”, Then we have four initial options at our disposal:

1) negentropic tendencies of the social environment;
2) entropic tendencies of the social environment;
3) negentropic personality tendencies;
4) the entropic tendencies of the personality.

It is necessary to briefly dwell on the description of each of them.

1. Negentropic tendencies of the social environment. Even Bacon posed the question of how a person can exist in conditions of a social order and, in general, what this social order is composed of. Most modern sociological theories are devoted to elucidating its nature. With regard to our task, they describe the possible parameters of the system “personality - social environment”, it is enough to note: a person can be included in formal and informal relations, the main quality of which is repetition, clarity and organization, ritual and stereotyped social conditions - situations of individual behavior. It is known that society cannot effectively influence an individual included in a group if the strategy of social influence is not consistent, unanimous and consistent.

2. Entropic tendencies of the social environment. Elements of chaos and disorder, social destabilization and disorganization of the device at various stages of its development E. Durkheim even considered necessary condition development of society, the presence in it of certain elements of disorganization. As you know, he emphasized this point in connection with the study of the nature of social anomie and crime. Without going into the details of a critical analysis of the views of E. Durkheim, we want to emphasize that entropic tendencies are especially clearly observed in the functioning of small social groups in the microsocial climate of some formal and informal human associations. An example is a drunken company, an agitated crowd during a sports show, a situation in a work collective with an unclear distribution of functions and roles, a random gathering of people who are not united by a common thread, etc.

3. Negentropic personality tendencies. This refers to the consistency of the views and attitudes of the individual; its consistency and organization in actions. It seems superfluous to consider in detail the mechanisms for ensuring and achieving stability, consistency of organization in the life of an individual, because this issue is widely discussed in the psychological literature and numerous works are devoted to its study. It can only be emphasized that the students and followers of D. N. Uznadze associate the mechanism of stability of individual behavior and characterological traits, world perception and beliefs with the fixation of the attitude, with a certain organization of fixed attitudes, their systemic structure and internal tendency towards consolidation and compatibility.

4. Entropic personality tendencies. Behavioral dissociation, disorganization, inconsistency in actions and beliefs, emotional instability are manifestations of internal chaos and entropic tendencies of the individual. There is no doubt that the limiting state of entropy growth is characteristic of pathology, however, it would be wrong to simplify in this way the question, allegedly the growth of entropy is associated with pathology, and the growth of negentropy is associated with mental health. Moreover, with many neurotic disorders, overorganization is noted, brought to pathological forms of ritualization, and, on the contrary, in practically healthy individuals, under certain conditions, an increase in entropic tendencies can be observed. This is well demonstrated in the well-known experiments of L. Festinger, T. Newcomb and A. Pepiton, F. G. Zimbardo in connection with the study of the phenomenon of deindividuation, which has already been partially discussed. The fact is that one of the indicators of deindividuation, according to these congestions, is impulsivity and destructive behavior, a decrease in self-control, chaotic behavior and disorganization of intrapersonal states. FG Zimbardo succinctly and clearly formulated the struggle between two moments - chaos and order - in human existence: "In the eternal struggle of order and chaos, we hope for the triumph of individuation, but mysteriously we are in a conspiracy with internal forces emanating from the depths of deindividuation." ...

Entropy philosophy.

ENTROPY (from the Greek entropia - turn, transformation) - part internal energy a closed system or energy complex of the Universe, which cannot be used, in particular, cannot pass or be transformed into mechanical work. The exact definition of entropy is done using mathematical calculations. The effect of entropy is most clearly seen in the example of thermodynamic processes. Thus, heat never completely transforms into mechanical work, being transformed into other types of energy. It is noteworthy that in reversible processes, the value of entropy remains unchanged, in irreversible processes, on the contrary, it steadily increases, and this increase occurs due to a decrease in mechanical energy. Consequently, all that multitude of irreversible processes that occur in nature is accompanied by a decrease in mechanical energy, which ultimately should lead to general paralysis, or, in other words, "heat death". But such a conclusion is valid only in the case of postulating the totalitarianism of the Universe as a closed empirical given. Christ. theologians, based on entropy, spoke about the finiteness of the world, using it as proof of the existence of God.

Entropy is growing. Does entropy grow in isolated systems?

Five myths about development and entropy. The third myth.
We keep money under lock and key, hide food from heat in ice.
But a person cannot live in solitude and locked up.
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in an isolated system does not decrease, that is, it persists or increases. Can it grow outside of an isolated system?
We note right away that the term "system" in the formulation of the second principle is used only for brevity. It means any set of elements, while the system includes connections between them and assumes some integrity. Both connections and integrity can only slow down the growth of entropy, excluding some (possibly undesirable for the system) states. In no other respect, consistency is not important for the second principle.
The requirement for isolation arises from the fact that from an open system entropy can be exported and dispersed in the environment. But, after the isolated set of elements has equilibrated, has come to the most probable macrostate, the entropy, having reached its maximum, cannot grow further.
The growth of entropy is possible only in the presence of some kind of non-equilibrium, which will not arise until the inflow of energy from the outside or its outflow resumes. It is not for nothing that we put things in isolated storage facilities - this prevents external influences that contribute to the emergence of disequilibrium and the further growth of entropy. Therefore, isolation, like systemicity, does not contribute to the growth of entropy, but only guarantees its non-decrease. It is outside an isolated system, in an open environment, that entropy grows predominantly.
Although the classical formulation of the second principle does not tell how entropy changes in open systems and environments, this is not a big problem. It is enough to mentally separate a section of the environment or a group of open systems that participate in the process and do not experience external influences and consider them a single isolated system. Then their total entropy should not decrease. This is how W. Ashby argued, for example, when assessing the effect of one system on another, and I. Prigogine when considering dissipative structures.
Worse, a large class of processes in which entropy grows, namely the processes of accumulation of disturbances in systems under the influence of external forces, seems to get out of the action of the second principle - after all, they cannot proceed in isolated systems!
Therefore, it would be better to formulate the law as follows: any spontaneous process of transformation of energy, mass, information does not reduce the total entropy of all systems and parts of the environment associated with it. In such a formulation, the excessive requirement of consistency is removed, isolation is ensured by taking into account all the elements involved in the process and the validity of the law is affirmed for all spontaneous processes.

Entropy in simple terms. What is entropy in simple words

Most often, the word "entropy" is found, of course, in classical physics. This is one of the most difficult concepts of this science, therefore even students of physics universities often face problems in the perception of this term. This is, of course, a physical indicator, but it is important to understand one fact - entropy is not similar to the usual concepts of volume, mass or pressure, because entropy is precisely the property of a particular matter under consideration.

In simple terms, entropy is an indicator of how much information we don't know about a particular subject. Well, for example, to the question where I live, I will answer you - in Moscow. This is a very specific coordinate - the capital Russian Federation- however, Moscow is a rather big city, so you still don't know the exact information about my location. But when I tell you my, for example, postal code, the entropy about me, as an object, will decrease.

This is not an entirely accurate analogy, so for clarification, we will give one more example. Let's say we take ten six-sided dice. Let's drop them all in turn, and then I will tell you the total of the dropped indicators - thirty. Based on the sum of all the results, you will not be able to say for sure which figure and on which die fell out - you simply do not have enough data for this. In our case, each dropped out digit in the language of physicists will be called a microstate, and an amount equal to thirty, in the same physical dialect, will be called a macrostate. If we calculate how many possible microstates three dozen can give us in total, we come to the conclusion that their number reaches almost three million values. Using a special formula, we can calculate the entropy index in this probabilistic experiment - six and a half. Where did half come from, you might ask? This fractional part appears due to the fact that when numbering in the seventh order, we can operate with only three numbers - 0, 1 and 2.

Entropy in biology. Entropy (disambiguation)

Entropy:

Entropy is a measure of irreversible dissipation of energy, a measure of the deviation of a real process from an ideal one.
Thermodynamic entropy - a function of the state of a thermodynamic system
Entropy (biology) is a unit of measurement of biodiversity in biological ecology.
Information entropy is a measure of the randomness of information, the uncertainty of the appearance of any symbol of the primary alphabet.
Entropy is a peer-to-peer decentralized computer communications network designed to be resistant to network censorship.
Topological entropy
Metric entropy
The entropy of a dynamical system
Differential entropy
The entropy of a language is a statistical function of a text in a certain language, or of the language itself, which determines the amount of information per unit of text.
Entropy (journal) is an international interdisciplinary journal at English language research on entropy and information.

"Entropy" is a 2012 feature film by Maria Sahakyan.
Entropy ( board game) (English Entropy) is a 1977 board game from Eric Solomon and 1994 from Augustine Carreno.

Video About entropy

Entropy examples. Introduction

Entropy

The dictionary of foreign words contains the following definition of entropy: entropy - 1) in physics - one of the quantities characterizing the thermal state of a body or a system of bodies; a measure of the internal disorder of the system; for all processes occurring in a closed system, entropy either increases (irreversible processes) or remains constant (reversible processes); 2) in information theory - a measure of the uncertainty of a situation (random variable) with a finite or even number of outcomes, for example, an experiment before which the result is not known exactly.

The concept of entropy was first introduced into science by Clausius in 1865 as a logical development of Carnot's thermodynamics.

But I characterize this concept as a measure of chaos. In my opinion, this is the most optimal topic at the moment because it is completely connected with life. Entropy is in everything. In nature, in man, in various sciences. Even the birth of a person in the womb begins with chaos. Entropy can also be associated with the formation of the planet, since before the appearance of God on Earth, all natural phenomena and everything that was on the planet was in a high degree of entropy. But after seven days, the planet acquired an orderly appearance, that is, everything fell into place.

Based on my findings, I would like to analyze this phenomenon in more detail and, so to speak, reduce the entropy of understanding this phenomenon.

The magnitude	Calculation formula	Meaning
The total entropy of the visible portion S (\ displaystyle S)	4π3sγlH03 (\ displaystyle (\ frac (4 \ pi) (3)) s _ (\ gamma) l_ (H_ (0)) ^ (3))	∼1088 (\ displaystyle \ sim 10 ^ (88))
Specific entropy of the photon gas sγ (\ displaystyle s _ (\ gamma))	8π290T03 (\ displaystyle (\ frac (8 \ pi ^ (2)) (90)) T_ (0) ^ (3))	≈1.5103 (\ displaystyle \ approx 1.510 ^ (3)) cm-3

The entropy of the Universe is a quantity that characterizes the degree of disorder and the thermal state of the Universe. The classical definition of entropy and the method for calculating it are not suitable for the Universe, since the forces of gravity act in it, and matter itself does not form a closed system. However, it can be proved that the total entropy is conserved in the accompanying volume.

In a relatively slowly expanding Universe, the entropy in the accompanying volume is conserved, and in order of magnitude the entropy is equal to the number of photons.

The law of conservation of entropy in the Universe

In the general case, the increment of internal energy has the form:

Let us take into account that the chemical potential of the particles are equal in value and opposite in sign:

If we consider the expansion to be an equilibrium process, then the last expression can be applied to the accompanying volume (V∝a3 (\ displaystyle V \ propto a ^ (3)), where a (\ displaystyle a) is the "radius" of the universe). However, in the accompanying volume, the difference between particles and antiparticles remains. Given this fact, we have:

But the reason for the change in volume is expansion. If now, taking this circumstance into account, we differentiate the last expression in time:

Now, if we substitute the continuity equation included in the system:

The latter means that the entropy is conserved in the accompanying volume.

Frederick's coronation in the church of Königsberg castle

Friedrich, son of the Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm, nicknamed the Great Elector, was born in Königsberg on July 11, 1657 from his father's first wife, Louise Henrietta. The death of his older brother, Karl-Emil in 1674, opened the way for him to the crown.

Poor health, spineless, easily influenced, he was prone to pomp and splendor. The striking difference between him and his father has been noted by all historians - a difference in character, views and aspirations. Lavis aptly calls Frederick the prodigal son of a miserly family. Along with the passion for luxury stood Frederick III's worship of everything French. The 1689 Deutsch-französische Modegeist says: “Now everything must be French: French, French clothing, French cuisine, tableware, French dances, French music and French disease. The proud, deceitful, depraved French spirit completely put the Germans to sleep. " Up to 820,000 thalers were spent a year on the maintenance of the courtyard, that is, only 10,000 thalers less than for the maintenance of the entire civil administration of the state. Frederick II described his grandfather with the words: "Great in small matters and small in great."

The most efficient cycle of a heat engine is the Karnot heat cycle. It consists of two isothermal and two adiabatic processes. The second law of thermodynamics states that not all of the heat supplied to a heat engine can be used to perform work. The efficiency of such a motor, which implements the Carnot cycle, gives the limiting value of that part of it that can be used for these purposes.

A few words about the reversibility of physical processes

A physical (and in the narrow sense of a thermodynamic) process in a certain system of bodies (including solids, liquids, gases) is reversible if, after it has been carried out, it is possible to restore the state in which the system was before it began. If it cannot return to its original state at the end of the process, then it is irreversible.

Reversible processes do not occur in nature. This is an idealized model of reality, a kind of instrument for its research in physics. An example of such a process is the Karnot cycle. An ideal heat engine is a model of a real system that implements a process named after the French physicist Sadi Carnot, who first described it.

What causes the irreversibility of processes?

Factors that lead to it include:

heat fluxes from the heat source to the consumer with a finite temperature difference between them;
unlimited gas expansion;
mixing of two gases;
friction;
the passage of an electric current through a resistance;
inelastic deformation;
chemical reactions.

The process is irreversible if any of these factors are present. The ideal Carnot cycle is a reversible process.

Internally and externally reversible processes

When the process is carried out, the factors of its irreversibility can be located within the system of bodies itself, as well as in its vicinity. It is called internally reversible if the system can be restored to the same state of equilibrium in which it was at the beginning. At the same time, there can be no irreversibility factors inside it, while the process under consideration lasts.

If irreversibility factors are absent outside the boundaries of the system in the process, then it is called externally reversible.

A process is called completely reversible if it is both internally and externally reversible.

What is a Karnot cycle?

In this process, implemented by an ideal heat engine, the working fluid - heated gas - performs mechanical work due to the heat received from the high-temperature heat reservoir (heater), and also gives off heat to the low-temperature heat reservoir (refrigerator).

The Carnot cycle is one of the most famous reversible cycles. It consists of four reversible processes. And although such loops are unattainable in practice, they set upper limits on the performance of real loops. It is shown in theory that this direct cycle converts thermal energy (heat) into mechanical work with the maximum possible efficiency.

How does an ideal gas perform a Carnot cycle?

Consider an ideal heat engine containing a gas cylinder and a piston. The four reversible cycle processes of such a machine are:

1. Reversible isothermal expansion. At the beginning of the process, the gas in the cylinder has a temperature T H. Through the walls of the cylinder, it contacts the heater, which has an infinitely small temperature difference with the gas. Consequently, the corresponding irreversibility factor in the form of a finite temperature difference is absent, and a reversible heat transfer process takes place from the heater to the working fluid - gas. Its internal energy grows, it expands slowly, while doing the work of moving the piston and remaining at a constant temperature T H. The total amount of heat transferred to the gas by the heater during this process is equal to Q H, however, only part of it is subsequently converted into work.

2. Reversible adiabatic expansion. The heater is removed and the Carnot gas expands slowly further in an adiabatic manner (with constant entropy) without heat exchange through the cylinder walls or piston. Its work to move the piston leads to a decrease in internal energy, which is expressed in a decrease in temperature from T H to T L. If we assume that the piston moves without friction, then the process is reversible.

3. Reversible isothermal compression. The cylinder is brought into contact with a refrigerator having a temperature T L. The piston is pushed back by an external force doing the work of compressing the gas. At the same time, its temperature remains equal to T L, and the process, including heat transfer from the gas to the refrigerator and compression, remains reversible. The total amount of heat removed from the gas to the refrigerator is equal to Q L.

4. Reversible adiabatic compression. The cooler is removed and the gas is slowly compressed further in an adiabatic manner (at constant entropy). Its temperature rises from T L to T N. The gas returns to its original state, which completes the cycle.

Carnot's Principles

If the processes that make up the Carnot cycle of a heat engine are reversible, then it is called a reversible heat engine. Otherwise, we have its irreversible version. In practice, all heat engines are such, since reversible processes do not exist in nature.

Carnot formulated principles that are a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. They are expressed as follows:

1. The efficiency of an irreversible heat engine is always less than that of a reversible one, operating from the same two heat reservoirs.

2. The efficiency of all reversible heat engines operating from the same two heat reservoirs is the same.

That is, the efficiency of a reversible heat engine does not depend on the working fluid used, its properties, cycle time and the type of heat engine. It is only a function of the temperature of the tanks:

where Q L is the heat transferred to the low-temperature reservoir, which has a temperature T L; Q H - heat transferred from a high-temperature reservoir, which has a temperature T H; g, F - any functions.

Carnot heat engine

It is called a heat engine that operates on a reversible Carnot cycle. The thermal efficiency of any heat engine, reversible or not, is defined as

η th = 1 - Q L / Q H,

where Q L and Q H are the amounts of heat transferred in the cycle to the low-temperature tank at the temperature T L and from the high-temperature tank at the temperature T H, respectively. For reversible heat engines, the thermal efficiency can be expressed in terms of the absolute temperatures of these two reservoirs:

η th = 1 - T L / T H.

The efficiency of a Carnot heat engine is the highest efficiency that a heat engine can achieve when operating between a high temperature reservoir at T H and a low temperature reservoir at T L. All irreversible heat engines operating between the same two reservoirs have lower efficiency.

Reverse process

The cycle in question is completely reversible. Its refrigeration version can be achieved if all processes included in it are reversed. In this case, the work of the Carnot cycle is used to create a temperature difference, i.e. thermal energy. During the reverse cycle, the gas receives the amount of heat Q L from the low-temperature reservoir, and the amount of heat Q H is given to them in the high-temperature heat reservoir. The energy W net, in is required to complete the cycle. It is equal to the area of the figure bounded by two isotherms and two adiabats. The PV diagrams of the forward and reverse Carnot cycle are shown in the figure below.

Refrigerator and heat pump

A refrigerator or heat pump that implements a reverse Carnot cycle is called a Carnot refrigerator or Carnot heat pump.

The efficiency of a reversible or irreversible refrigerator (η R) or heat pump (η HP) is defined as:

where Q N is the amount of heat removed to the high-temperature tank;
Q L - the amount of heat received from the low-temperature reservoir.

For reversible refrigerators or heat pumps such as Carnot refrigerators or heat pumps Carnot, efficiency can be expressed in terms of absolute temperatures:

where T H = absolute temperature in the high-temperature tank;
T L = absolute temperature in the low temperature tank.

η R (or η HP) are the highest efficiency of a refrigerator (or heat pump) they can achieve when operating between a high temperature tank at T H and a low temperature tank at T L. All irreversible refrigerators or heat pumps operating between the same two tanks have lower efficiencies.

Household refrigerator

The basic idea behind a home refrigerator is simple: it uses the evaporation of refrigerant to absorb heat from the refrigerated space in the refrigerator. There are four main parts in any refrigerator:

Compressor.
Tubular radiator outside the refrigerator.
Expansion valve.
Heat exchange tubes inside the refrigerator.

The reverse Carnot cycle when the refrigerator is running is performed in the following order:

Adiabatic compression. The compressor compresses the refrigerant vapors, increasing their temperature and pressure.
Isothermal compression. The high temperature refrigerant vapor compressed by the compressor dissipates heat to the environment (high temperature reservoir) as it flows through the radiator outside the refrigerator. Refrigerant vapors are condensed (compressed) into a liquid phase.
Adiabatic expansion. Liquid refrigerant flows through the expansion valve to reduce its pressure.
Isothermal expansion. Cold liquid refrigerant evaporates as it passes through the heat exchange tubes inside the refrigerator. In the process of evaporation, its internal energy increases, and this growth is provided by the extraction of heat from the inner space of the refrigerator (low-temperature tank), as a result of which it cools. The gas then enters the compressor for compression again. The reverse Carnot cycle is repeated.

Singularity. Comments (1)

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Entropy is a word that many have heard, but few understand. And we have to admit that it is really difficult to fully comprehend the essence of this phenomenon. However, this should not scare us. A lot of what surrounds us, we, in fact, can only superficially explain. And we are not talking about the perception or knowledge of any particular individual. No. We are talking about the entire body of scientific knowledge that humanity has at its disposal.

Serious gaps exist not only in knowledge of a galactic scale, for example, in questions about and wormholes, but also in what surrounds us all the time. For example, there is still debate about the physical nature of light. And who can sort out the concept of time? There are a great many similar questions. But this article will focus on entropy. For many years, scientists have been struggling with the concept of "entropy". Chemistry and physics go hand in hand in studying this. We will try to find out what has become known by our time.

Introduction of the concept in the scientific community

For the first time the concept of entropy was introduced into the environment of specialists by the outstanding German mathematician Rudolf Julius Emmanuel Clausius. In simple terms, the scientist decided to find out where the energy goes. In what sense? To illustrate, we will not refer to the numerous experiments and complex conclusions of a mathematician, but take an example that is more familiar to us from Everyday life.

You should be well aware that when you charge, say, a battery mobile phone, the amount of energy that is accumulated in the batteries will be less than actually received from the network. There are certain losses. And in everyday life, we are used to it. But the fact is that similar losses occur in other closed systems. And for physicists and mathematicians, this is already a serious problem. Rudolf Clausius was also engaged in the study of this issue.

As a result, he deduced the most curious fact. If we, again, remove the complex terminology, he will be reduced to the fact that entropy is the difference between an ideal and a real process.

Imagine you own a store. And you received 100 kilograms of grapefruits for sale at the price of 10 tugriks per kilogram. Putting a markup of 2 tugriks per kilo, you will receive 1200 tugriks as a result of the sale, give the due amount to the supplier and keep yourself a profit of two hundred tugriks.

So, this was a description of the ideal process. And any trader knows that by the time all the grapefruits are sold, they will have had time to dry out by 15 percent. And 20 percent will completely rot, and they will simply have to be written off. But this is already a real process.

So, the concept of entropy, which was introduced into the mathematical environment by Rudolf Clausius, is defined as the interconnection of a system in which the increase in entropy depends on the ratio of the temperature of the system to the value of absolute zero. In fact, it shows the value of the waste (lost) energy.

Chaos measure

It is also possible to assert with some degree of conviction that entropy is a measure of chaos. That is, if we take the room of an ordinary student as a model of a closed system, then a school uniform that has not been removed in place will already characterize some entropy. But its significance in this situation will be small. But if, in addition to this, you scatter toys, bring popcorn from the kitchen (naturally, dropping it a little) and leave all the textbooks in a mess on the table, then the entropy of the system (and in this particular case, of this room) will dramatically increase.

Complex matter

The entropy of matter is a very difficult process to describe. Over the past century, many scientists have contributed to the study of the mechanism of its work. Moreover, the concept of entropy is used not only by mathematicians and physicists. It also has a well-deserved place in chemistry. And some craftsmen use it to explain even psychological processes in relationships between people. Let's trace the difference in the formulations of the three physicists. Each of them reveals entropy from the other side, and their combination will help us paint a more holistic picture for ourselves.

Clausius' statement

The process of transfer of heat from a body with a lower temperature to a body with a higher one is impossible.

It is not difficult to verify this postulate. You can never warm up, say, a frozen little puppy with cold hands, no matter how much you want to help him. Therefore, you will have to shove him in his bosom, where the temperature is higher than his at the moment.

Thomson's claim

A process is impossible, the result of which would be the performance of work due to the heat taken from some one body.

And if quite simply, it means that it is physically impossible to design a perpetual motion machine. The entropy of a closed system will not allow.

Boltzmann's statement

Entropy cannot decrease in closed systems, that is, in those that do not receive external energy support.

This formulation shook the faith of many adherents of the theory of evolution and made them think seriously about the existence of an intelligent Creator in the Universe. Why?

Because, by default, in a closed system, entropy always increases. This means that chaos is getting worse. It can be reduced only through external energy supply. And we observe this law every day. If you do not take care of the garden, house, car, etc., they will simply fall into disrepair.

On a mega-scale, our Universe is also a closed system. And scientists have come to the conclusion that our very existence should testify to the fact that from somewhere this external energy supply comes from. Therefore, today no one is surprised that astrophysicists believe in God.

Arrow of time

Another very clever illustration of entropy can be thought of as the arrow of time. That is, entropy shows in which direction the process will move physically.

Indeed, it is unlikely that, upon learning of the gardener's dismissal, you will expect that the territory for which he was responsible will become more neat and well-groomed. Quite the opposite - if you do not hire another worker, after a while even the most beautiful garden will fall into disrepair.

Entropy in chemistry

In the discipline "Chemistry" entropy is an important indicator. In some cases, its value affects the course of chemical reactions.

Who has not seen shots from feature films in which the heroes very carefully carried containers with nitroglycerin, fearing to provoke an explosion with a careless sharp movement? It was visual aid to the principle of action of entropy in a chemical substance. If its indicator reached a critical level, then a reaction would begin, as a result of which an explosion occurs.

Order of disorder

Most often, it is argued that entropy is the desire for chaos. In general, the word "entropy" means transformation or rotation. We have already said that it characterizes an action. The entropy of the gas is very interesting in this context. Let's try to imagine how it happens.

We take a closed system consisting of two connected containers, each of which contains gas. The pressure in the containers, until they were hermetically connected to each other, was different. Imagine what happened at the molecular level when they were connected.

The crowd of molecules, which was under stronger pressure, immediately rushed to their fellows, who had lived quite freely before. Thus, they increased the pressure there. This can be compared to the splashing water in the bathroom. Having run to one side, she immediately rushes to the other. So are our molecules. And in our system, ideally isolated from external influences, they will push until an impeccable balance is established in the entire volume. And now, when there is exactly the same amount of space around each molecule as in the neighboring one, everything will calm down. And this will be the highest entropy in chemistry. The turns and transformations will stop.

Standard entropy

Scientists do not give up their attempts to organize and classify even disorder. Since the value of entropy depends on a set of concomitant conditions, the concept of "standard entropy" was introduced. The values are summarized in special tables so that you can easily carry out calculations and solve various applied problems.

By default, the standard entropy values are considered under conditions of pressure of one atmosphere and temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. As the temperature rises, this indicator also rises.

Codes and ciphers

There is also informational entropy. It is designed to help in encrypting encoded messages. With regard to information, entropy is the value of the probability that information is predictable. In simple terms, this is how easy it will be to break the intercepted cipher.

How it works? At first glance, it seems that it is impossible to understand the encoded message without at least some initial data. But it is not so. This is where probability comes in.

Imagine a page with an encrypted message. You know that the Russian language was used, but the characters are completely unfamiliar. Where to begin? Think: what is the probability that the letter "ъ" will appear on this page? And the opportunity to stumble upon the letter "o"? You get the system. The symbols that occur most often are calculated (and least often - this is also an important indicator), and compared with the peculiarities of the language in which the message was composed.

In addition, there are frequent, and in some languages and unchanging letter combinations. This knowledge is also used for decryption. By the way, this is the method used by the famous Sherlock Holmes in the story "Dancing Men". Codes were cracked in the same way on the eve of World War II.

And the information entropy is designed to increase the reliability of the encoding. Thanks to the derived formulas, mathematicians can analyze and improve the options offered by the encryptors.

Dark matter connection

There are a great many theories that are still awaiting confirmation. One of them connects the phenomenon of entropy with the relatively recently discovered It says that the lost energy is simply converted into dark. Astronomers admit that in our Universe, only 4 percent is accounted for by the matter we know. And the remaining 96 percent are occupied with what is currently unexplored - dark.

It received this name due to the fact that it does not interact with electromagnetic radiation and does not emit it (like all previously known objects in the Universe). Therefore, at this stage in the development of science, the study of dark matter and its properties is not possible.

Use in various disciplines

Thermodynamic entropy is a thermodynamic function that characterizes the measure of irreversible energy dissipation in it.
In statistical physics, it characterizes the probability of a certain macroscopic state of the system.
In mathematical statistics, a measure of the uncertainty of a probability distribution.
Information entropy - in information theory, a measure of the uncertainty of the source of messages, determined by the probabilities of the appearance of certain symbols during their transmission.
The entropy of a dynamical system - in the theory of dynamical systems, a measure of chaos in the behavior of the trajectories of the system.
Differential entropy is a formal generalization of the concept of entropy for continuous distributions.
The entropy of reflection is a part of information about a discrete system that is not reproduced when the system is reflected through the totality of its parts.
Entropy in control theory is a measure of the uncertainty of the state or behavior of a system under given conditions.

In thermodynamics

The concept of entropy was first introduced by Clausius in thermodynamics in 1865 to determine the measure of irreversible dissipation of energy, the measure of the deviation of a real process from the ideal. Defined as the sum of reduced heats, it is a function of state and remains constant in closed reversible processes, while in irreversible processes, its change is always positive.

Entropy is mathematically defined as a function of the state of the system, determined up to an arbitrary constant. The difference of entropies in two equilibrium states 1 and 2, by definition, is equal to the reduced amount of heat ( δ Q / T (\ displaystyle \ delta Q / T)), which must be reported to the system in order to transfer it from state 1 to state 2 along any quasi-static path:

Δ S 1 → 2 = S 2 - S 1 = ∫ 1 → 2 δ QT (\ displaystyle \ Delta S_ (1 \ to 2) = S_ (2) -S_ (1) = \ int \ limits _ (1 \ to 2) (\ frac (\ delta Q) (T))).

(1)

Since the entropy is determined up to an arbitrary constant, one can conditionally take state 1 as the initial one and put S 1 = 0 (\ displaystyle S_ (1) = 0)... Then

S = ∫ δ Q T (\ displaystyle S = \ int (\ frac (\ delta Q) (T))),

(2.)

Here the integral is taken for an arbitrary quasistatic process. Differential function S (\ displaystyle S) has the form

d S = δ Q T (\ displaystyle dS = (\ frac (\ delta Q) (T))).

(3)

Entropy establishes a connection between macro and micro states. The peculiarity of this characteristic is that it is the only function in physics that shows the direction of processes. Since entropy is a function of a state, it does not depend on how the transition from one state of the system to another is made, but is determined only by the initial and final states of the system.

ENTROPY

(from the Greek entropia - turn,)

a part of the internal energy of a closed system or energy complex of the Universe that cannot be used, in particular, cannot be transferred or converted into mechanical work. The exact entropy is produced using mathematical calculations. The effect of entropy is most clearly seen in the example of thermodynamic processes. So, it never completely goes over into mechanical work, being transformed into other types of energy. It is noteworthy that in reversible processes, the value of entropy remains unchanged, in irreversible processes, on the contrary, it steadily increases, and this increase occurs due to a decrease in mechanical energy. Consequently, all the irreversible processes that occur in nature are accompanied by a decrease in mechanical energy, which ultimately should lead to general paralysis, or, in other words, "heat death". But this is only valid if the totalitarianism of the Universe is postulated as a closed empirical given. Christ. theologians, based on entropy, spoke about the finiteness of the world, using it as the existence of God.

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2010 .

ENTROPY

(Greek ἐντροπία - rotation, transformation) - states of thermodynamic. system, which characterizes the direction of the flow of spontaneous processes in this system and is a measure of their irreversibility. The concept of energy was introduced in 1865 by R. Clausius to characterize the processes of energy conversion; in 1877 L. Boltzmann gave him a statistic. interpretation. With the help of the concept of E., the second law of thermodynamics is formulated: the E. of a thermally insulated system always only increases, i.e. such, left to herself, tends to thermal equilibrium, with which E. is maximum. In statistical physics E. expresses uncertainty microscopic. state of the system: the more microscopic. states of the system correspond to this macroscopic. state, the higher the thermodynamic. and E. last. A system with an unlikely structure, left to itself, develops towards the most probable structure, i.e. in the direction of increasing E. This, however, applies only to closed systems, therefore E. cannot be used to substantiate the thermal death of the universe. In theory, information is viewed as a lack of information in the system. In cybernetics, using the concepts of e. And negentropy (neg. Entropy) express the measure of the organization of the system. Being fair in relation to systems obeying statistical. regularities, this measure, however, requires great care when transferring to biological, linguistic and social systems.

Lit .: Shambadal P., Development and applications of the concept of E., [trans. S.], M., 1967; Pearce J., Symbols, signals, noises, [trans. from English], M., 1967.

L. Fatkin. Moscow.

Philosophical Encyclopedia. In 5 volumes - M .: Soviet encyclopedia. Edited by F.V. Konstantinov. 1960-1970 .

Synonyms:

See what "ENTROPY" is in other dictionaries:

- (from the Greek entropia, rotation, transformation), a concept first introduced in thermodynamics to determine the measure of irreversible energy dissipation. E. is widely used in other fields of science: in statistical physics as a measure of the likelihood of the implementation of a. ... ... Physical encyclopedia

ENTROPY, an indicator of the randomness or disorder of the structure of a physical system. In THERMODYNAMICS, entropy expresses the amount of heat energy suitable for performing work: the less energy, the higher the entropy. In the scale of the Universe ... ... Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary

A measure of the internal disorder of an information system. Entropy increases with a chaotic distribution information resources and decreases as they are ordered. In English: Entropy See also: Information Financial Dictionary Finam ... Financial vocabulary

- [eng. entropy Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Entropy- Entropy ♦ Entropie The property of the state of an isolated (or taken for such) physical system, characterized by the amount of spontaneous change that it is capable of. The entropy of a system reaches its maximum when it is completely ... Sponville's Philosophical Dictionary

- (from the Greek entropia, turn transformation) (usually denoted by S), a function of the state of a thermodynamic system, the change in which dS in an equilibrium process is equal to the ratio of the amount of heat dQ imparted to the system or removed from it, to ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Disorder, discord. Dictionary of Russian synonyms. entropy n., number of synonyms: 2 disorder (127) ... Synonym dictionary

ENTROPY- (from the Greek en in, inward and trope, turn, transformation), a value characterizing the measure of bound energy (D S), which cannot be converted into work in an isothermal process. It is determined by the logarithm of thermodynamic probability and ... ... Ecological Dictionary

entropy- and, w. entropie f., ger. Entropie c. en in, inward + trope turn, transformation. one. Physical quantity characterizing the thermal state of a body or a system of bodies and possible changes in these states. Calculation of entropy. ALS 1. || ... ... Historical Dictionary of Russian Gallicisms

ENTROPY- ENTROPY, a concept introduced in thermodynamics and which is, as it were, a measure of the irreversibility of a process, a measure of the transition of energy into such a form, from which it cannot spontaneously pass into other forms. All conceivable processes occurring in any system ... ... Great medical encyclopedia

Books

Statistical mechanics. Entropy, order parameters, complexity theory, James P. Setna. The textbook "Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters and Complexity" was written by James Setna, Professor of Cornell University (USA) and was first published in English in 2006 ...

Entropy is a measure of how complex a system is. Not a mess, but complication and development. The greater the entropy, the more difficult it is to understand the logic of this particular system, situation, phenomenon. It is generally accepted that the more time passes, the less orderly the universe becomes. The reason for this is the uneven rate of development of the Universe as a whole and us, as observers of entropy. We, as observers, are a huge number of orders of magnitude simpler than the Universe. Therefore, it seems to us excessively redundant, we are not able to understand most of the cause-and-effect relationships that make up it. The psychological aspect is also important - it is difficult for people to get used to the fact that they are not unique. Understand that the thesis that humans are the crown of evolution is not far removed from the earlier belief that the Earth is the center of the universe. It is pleasant for a person to believe in his exclusivity and it is not surprising that we tend to see structures that are more complex than us as disordered and chaotic.

There are very good answers above explaining entropy in terms of the modern scientific paradigm. The respondents explain this phenomenon with simple examples. Socks scattered around the room, broken glasses, monkeys playing chess, etc. But if you look closely, you understand - the order here is expressed in a truly human representation. The word "better" applies to a good half of these examples. Better stacked socks in a closet than scattered socks on the floor. Better a whole glass than a broken glass. A notebook written in beautiful handwriting is better than a notebook with blots. In human logic, it is not clear what to do with entropy. The smoke escaping from the pipe is not utilitarian. A book torn to pieces is useless. It is difficult to extract at least a minimum of information from the polyphonic dialect and noise in the metro. In this sense, it will be very interesting to return to the definition of entropy introduced by the physicist and mathematician Rudolf Clausius, who saw this phenomenon as a measure of irreversible dissipation of energy. Who does this energy go from? Who is finding it more difficult to use it? Yes, man! It is very difficult (if not impossible) to collect spilled water all, up to a drop, into a glass again. To fix old clothes, you need to use new material (cloth, thread, etc.). This does not take into account the meaning that this entropy may not carry for people. I will give an example when the dissipation of energy for us will carry the exact opposite meaning for another system:

You know that every second a huge amount of information from our planet flies into space. For example, in the form of radio waves. For us, this information seems completely lost. But if a sufficiently developed alien civilization is on the way of radio waves, its representatives can accept and decipher a part of this lost energy for us. Hear and understand our voices, see our television and radio programs, connect to our Internet traffic))). In this case, our entropy can be ordered by other intelligent beings. And the more the dissipation of energy will be for us, the more energy they will be able to collect.