Introduction to entropy: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:11, 24 October 2006

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'''Entropy''' describes any of several phenomena, depending on the field it is being used in.

Originally, entropy was named to describe the "waste heat" from engines and other mechanical devices. Later, the term came to acquire several descriptions as more came to be understood about the behavior of molecules on the microscopic level. In the late 19th century the word disorder was used by [[LudvigLudwig Boltzmann]] to describe the increased molecular movement on the microscopic level. That was before quantum behavior came to be better understood by [[Werner Heisenberg]] and those who followed. For most of the 20th century textbooks tended to describe entropy as "disorder", following Boltzmann. More recently there has been a trend in chemistry and physics textbooks to describe entropy in terms of "dispersal of energy".