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Talk:Second Law of Thermodynamics (view source)
Revision as of 18:36, August 2, 2016
, 18:36, August 2, 2016no edit summary
::::It does seem tangential, but it is placed lower in the entry. There is an appropriate reluctance to delete educational information that some may find to be enlightening.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 03:37, 9 February 2014 (EST)
::::It does seem tangential, but it is placed lower in the entry. There is an appropriate reluctance to delete educational information that some may find to be enlightening.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 03:37, 9 February 2014 (EST)
== Statistical Nature of the law ==
I just want to point out that the second law is statistical in nature, which has not really been discussed. Suppose you have a container with a partition separating two gases A and B. When the partition is removed, the entropy increases as the number of different microstates for this state is greater. It is possible that, just by chance, all the particles of gas A end up on one side and those of gas B on the other, so that it is the same state as when we started. Now there is only one microstate corresponding to this state, so the entropy has decreased. However, we never see this happen because the number of microstates for a more disordered system is vastly greater. My point is that it is wrong to say things like "heat always flows from hot to cold" or that "it is impossible for order to come from disorder". (Note that I'm not intentionally trying to quote anyone or say anything about evolution, I'm just talking about the physics)--[[User:bobklein|bobklein]] 14:34, 2 August 2016 (EST)