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Talk:Second Law of Thermodynamics

944 bytes added, 01:12, June 18, 2012
Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/Enidblyton11|Enidblyton11]] ([[User talk:Enidblyton11|talk]]) to last revision by [[User:Randall7|Randall7]]
The trend towards protecting articles by users in edit conflicts is worrisome. Furthermore, the protected version is simply wrong. One of the Conservapedia Commandments is that everything should be sourced. I therefore would very much like to know if there is any source for the claim that "he Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe tends towards a maximum" This statement is wrong at multiple levels- the 2nd Law is about closed systems (or can be stated about open systems with a some tweaking of the consequent), it says nothing about the universe. Furthermore, tending towards a maximum doesn't even mean that the entropy levels can't decrease. For example, the sequence, 1,3,2,5,4,7,6,9,8... tends towards infinity but is not an increasing sequence. [[User:JoshuaZ|JoshuaZ]] 04:05, 4 March 2007 (EST)
:Second law also says nothing about an upper bound to the entropy of a system; the entropy of the Universe could increase without limit, in principle, making the 'maximum' part wrong too. :To be fair to Philip, the increase of the Universe's entropy ''is'' a tendency, not an absolute. The total entropy of an isolated system can decrease; it's just hugely improbable on the scales we're used to dealing with. Quantum effects can lead to a decrease in entropy; one has to deal with a very small system over short periods of time to actually notice this, however. Arbitrarily large decreases in entropy are also possible, given sufficient time. This is true whether one is discussing the fluctuation theorems of QM, or good old-fashioned classical systems. :But these are not, strictly speaking, parts of the second law. Second law doesn't say anything about tendency. The rest of physics just says that second law is not absolute. So I don't think using the word 'tends' in the definition is very useful.
:The main problem with the article is, of course, the part about evolution, which as Horace says is just wrong, and painfully so. It's a seductive argument to the layman; after all, entropy is all about order and disorder, and evolution clearly requires the production of order. Right?
Jpatt
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