Which approach you were taken along completely colours your view, as was apparent from the comments which could come over as quite partisan. After all people are doing the course and a lot of the interest is in seeing how the different minds work through their comments.
My daughter did thermodynamics as a chemist and such family discussions as you can have about entropy showed how little common ground we had. Next time we meet it will be fun to be able to talk about her world, to see how she explains things again and relate it to this course.
So yes, an enjoyable and instructive course but you do have to go with the flow, take what you are told on trust, let it soak in and let your world view evolve. Category: FutureLearn Local. Category: FutureLearn Local , Learning. We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life.
You can unlock new opportunities with unlimited access to hundreds of online short courses for a year by subscribing to our Unlimited package. Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations. Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education. Learn more about this course. What increases entropy? Great course 20 Apr, In 3 weeks the fundamentals of thermodynamics.
However, overall, entropy in a system increases over time, because changes towards disorder are overwhelmingly more likely than those towards order. The meat of it is that randomness is simple and low on energy. Nature loves that. A glass of ice is more orderly than a glass of water. Molecules in ice are kept in a very specific arrangement, forming a lattice that we perceive as ice cubes. Entropy also moves things along towards low states of energy including potential energy because spontaneous processes tend to work towards fixing imbalances and thus expending energy.
Some probabilities are more likely than others — which is our statistical entropy — because they lead to simpler, more homogenous systems by transforming energy — our physical entropy. And in nature, quite like in finances, nothing happens unless you pay for it with free energy. Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40, subscribers can't be wrong. The free energy of a system can be used to perform physical work to move things.
This means that either a transfer of heat, which is energy, or an increase in entropy can provide power for the system. This latter one is usually seen as changes to volume, especially in endothermic heat absorbing reactions. Fluids, like liquids or gas, are generally made of smaller, lighter molecules. Since things naturally tend to gain entropy, then complex systems tend to break down into disorganized ones. It is one of few physical notions that require a very definite direction in time.
The general cases below illustrate entropy at the molecular level. These examples serve to illustrate how the entropy change in a reaction can be predicted:. The entropy is decreasing because a gas is becoming a liquid. The entropy is increasing because a gas is being produced and the number of molecules is increasing. The entropy is decreasing because four total reactant molecules are forming two total product molecules.
All are gases. The entropy is decreasing because a solid is formed from aqueous reactants. The entropy change is unknown but likely not zero , because there are equal numbers of molecules on both sides of the equation, and all are gases.
The longer one exists, the more it grinds out restrictions that slow its own functions. It reaches entropy in a state of total narcissism. Only the people sufficiently far out in the field get anything done, and every time they do, they are breaking half a dozen rules in the process. One way to understand this is with an analogy to entropy. Just as energy tends towards a less useful, more disordered state, so do businesses and organizations in general. We come back two months later to find that five of them have quit, five are sleeping with each other, and the other ten have no idea how to solve the litany of problems that have arisen.
The employees are certainly not much closer to the goal laid out for them. The whole enterprise just sort of falls apart. It reminds one distinctly of entropy: For every useful arrangement of affairs towards a common business goal, there are many orders of magnitude more arrangements that will get us nowhere.
For progress to be made, everything needs to be arranged and managed in a certain way; we have to input a lot of energy to keep things in an ordered state. In practice, both models seem to be useful at different times.
Any startup entrepreneur who has stayed long enough to see a company thrive in unexpected ways knows this. The amount of diligent management needed will vary. Entropy occurs in every aspect of a business. Employees may forget training, lose enthusiasm, cut corners, and ignore rules. Equipment may break down, become inefficient, or be subject to improper use. Products may become outdated or be in less demand.
Even the best of intentions cannot prevent an entropic slide towards chaos. Successful businesses invest time and money to minimize entropy.
For example, they provide regular staff training, good reporting of any issues, inspections, detailed files, and monitoring reports of successes and failures. Anything less will mean almost inevitable problems and loss of potential revenue.
Without the necessary effort, a business will reach the point of maximum entropy: bankruptcy. Fortunately, unlike thermodynamic systems, a business can reverse the impact of entropy. A balance must be struck between creativity and control, though. Too little autonomy for employees results in disinterest, while too much leads to poor decisions.
Without constant maintenance from individuals and dominant institutions, societies tend toward chaos. When I began studying the notion of entropy it became clear to me that thermodynamic entropy was merely one instance of a concept with much broader applications … I became convinced that entropy applied to social phenomena as well. One example of what happens when entropy increases unchecked occurred in the Kowloon Walled City.
For a substantial length of time, Kowloon was abandoned by the government after the British took control of Hong Kong. At one point, an estimated 33, residents were crammed into buildings over 6. With no space for new construction, stories were added to the existing buildings. Because of minimal water supplies and a lack of ventilation no sunlight or fresh air reached lower levels , the health of residents suffered. A community of unlicensed medical professionals flourished, alongside brothels and gambling dens.
With no one controlling the city, organized crime gangs took over. It became a haven for lawlessness. Though police were too scared to make any attempts to restore order, residents did make desperate attempts to reduce the entropy themselves. Groups formed to improve the quality of life, creating charities, places for religious practices, nurseries, and businesses to provide income.
In , the Hong Kong government acknowledged the state of Kowloon. The government demolished and rebuilt the city, evicting residents and destroying all but a couple of historic buildings.
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