No matter how many times you vacuum your carpet, do your bed, and fold your laundry, you end up with a messy room again by the end of the week. You might even feel that some invisible force drives your living space toward more disorder and chaos. That’s right, you’re not to blame.
The same sort of unrelenting drive to disorder occurs even at the molecular level. Physicists like to call it entropy, but really, it’s the messy room concept. From the Greek, εντροπος, entropy means “inner tendency.” All matter in the world, large as galaxies and small as atoms, has an innate preference for a state of chaos. Just like your laundry, if we took a hundred gas particles, and neatly lined them up in a row, we can be sure they will break formation. Each particle will go its own way, in a stochastic or random manner. Similarly, by Saturday, you’ll find one sock behind the headboard, and the other, curiously enough, between your mattresses. Or perhaps I am a little messier than you are. Full Article »