Introduction to entropy: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:00, 28 October 2006

Revision as of 04:05, 28 October 2006

Line 1:

<!-- Remove the above tag when links have been created TO this article from OTHER articles. Otherwise it will just get added again in a few days -->

The concept of '''entropy''' is central to the [[second law of thermodynamics]], which deals with physical processes and whether they occur spontaneously, and in a general sense says that temperature differences between systems in contact with each other tend to even out and that work can be obtained from these non-equilibrium differences, but that loss of heat occurs, in the form of entropy, when work is done. The concept of [[energy]] is central to the [[first law of thermodynamics]], which deals with the [[conservation of energy]] and under which the loss in heat will result in an increase in the [[internal energy]] of the [[thermodynamic system]]. Thermodynamic entropy provides a comparative measure of the amount of this internal energy. A simple and more concrete visualisation of the second law is that energy of all types changes from being localized to becoming dispersed or spread out, if it is not hindered from doing so. Entropy change is the quantitative measure of that kind of a spontaneous process: how much energy has flowed or how widely it has become spread out at a specific temperature.