ENTROPY

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning while I was cleaning my teeth. I was thinking about science.

Sometimes science is wonderful. It's expertly precise. For example, would you like to know what the Four Laws of Thermodynamics are?

Here you go:

0. You can tell how hot something is by taking its temperature.

1. If you heat something up, it gets hotter with more energy. If you cool it down, it loses energy.

2. Hot things make cold things hot because the amount of entropy in the universe is going up.

3. You can't cool anything down below Absolute Zero.


I've oversimplified them. It says something doesn't it when the explanation is easier than the reason for the weird numbering system.

Anyway for a bit of clarity, Absolute Zero is the temperature at which atoms stop moving. It's -273 degrees C.

Oh yes and entropy (if you've not heard of it before) is...

... well, entropy is that measure of how disorganised something is. And the universe loves it.

For example, if a bunch of atoms of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and whatever else have been neatly arranged to form a cup of coffee, that's really a quite well-organised collection. That 'system' of china, coffee, milk and sugar has low entropy.

Then, if you knocked it off the coffee table and it smashed all over the carpet, that 'system' (the same atoms) would be a lot less well-organised and its entropy (its measure of disorder) would go up. The pesky universe revels in this kind of thing.

That's why time is the way round it is - it's much easier to increase the entropy of a system than it is to decrease it. Or, if you like... good luck re-arranging that cup of coffee to exactly how it was before you smashed it.

Well, so says Stephen Hawking anyway. And I'm inclined to nod along as though I know what he's talking about.

The timer on my toothbrush ran out.

I'm the victim of the universe's quest for high entropy. Things do seem to tend towards disorder, and it's a constant battle to stop it happening. I smiled as I imagined myself fundamentally at war with the universe on those rare occasions when I do the vacuuming and the washing up. And if not with the universe, then definitely with those pixies who come in and mess up my flat when I'm not looking.