Entropy in daily life

We already explained that entropy is the disorder or randomness in a system, but do we we know where to find it our daily life and how it affects us?

Entropy and weather: Entropy means that all matter and energy in an isolated system moves towards thermodynamic equilibrium. The pressure in one part of the weather will always expand seeking equilibrium with areas of lower pressure. The presence of heat in one part of the atmosphere will seek equilibrium with the cooler parts of the atmosphere. Because of many factors like the suns heat, the atmosphere, earths gravity, differentials in temperature and pressure are created, that there after evolve towards equilibrium with the other parts of the atmosphere.

For example, why are tornadoes created?
When hot air raises up to the atmosphere and crashes or mixes with the cool air that is coming down from the atmosphere, a difference in pressure is created making the air spin faster and faster therefore creating a tornado.




A camp fire is another example of entropy because when the solid wood burns and becomes ash, smoke, and gases. All of which are far more disordered than solid fuel.

An example that everyone can find at home is a messy room: When you clean your room, it doesn't stay neat on its own. Unless you do work each day to keep things picked up, your shoes find their way out of the closet to the side of your bed, the jewelry, coins, and beauty products on your dresser get all jumble up, and your laundry pile grow every time you decide to change your outfit. Even the bed sheets get all scrambled.



And perhaps the most simple example of all, a bad hair day: When your hair is brushed and clean, it looks good and doesn't move. But when its all messy and greasy, it impossible to brush it down.

Examples of entropy

Entropy on our daily life... Lets make a review of all the concepts that we saw on the last blog.. Entropy: A quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work. as well as the disorder or randomness in a closed system. Lets think of a deck of cards, each deck has 52 cards in it, and the possibility to get one specific card of the whole is one over 52, so than we can conclude and relate these to be its Entropy, the possibility to get again the card is 1 over 52, the same happens in molecules because any spontaneous process increases the disorder of the universe What would happen if we put together now 2 decks of cards? its entropy will increase or decrease? If you answered decrease then you're wrong!!! It will increase since the possibility to get the card you wanted has doubled, so as its entropy.

So whats a spontaneous process? Not requiring an outside force to proceed. In chemistry it doesn't tell you how quickly something happens, it only tells you that the reaction is thermodynamically capable to happen without outside energy. How can we calculate the change in entropy? By subtracting the sum of the reactive values from the sum of the product values. Other examples of entropy are shown in the climate change, electrons in atomic shells, heating and cooling water, and a lot of other examples we can have... for now lets explain a little more about the water heating and cooling process In order to heat water, it needs to be exposed to heat energy for some time. This energy is transferred to the particles in water, gradually causing them to vibrate at a faster rate. Additionally, the particles' motion also increases in speed; they begin to zoom across the container in a random and disorderly manner. The change in how the particles move and vibrate causes the temperature of the water to increase. However, the opposite of this behavior is also observed when the water is no longer exposed to heat energy. The particles gradually decrease in speed and the intensity of vibration becomes smaller. As a result, the water cools down with time. TO BE MORE CLEAR ABOUT ENTROPY HERE IS A VIDEO FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

In this blog we'll be giving a short intro to the understanding od entropy.

So why is our title blurry?

That would be because entropy is basically the measurement of disorder and randomness in a system. To better understand its meaning we need to review the four laws of thermodynamics, as entropy is the core idea behind these laws.

·         Zeroth law of thermodynamics – If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

·         First law of thermodynamics – Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms. In any process, the total energy of the universe remains the same. For a thermodynamic cycle the net heat supplied to the system equals the net work done by the system.

·         Second law of thermodynamics – The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

·         Third law of thermodynamics – As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum.

The main idea of the third and second law is that the more we approach absolute zero the less entropy we have. The colder the system is the less energy there is, and the less energy there is, the more organization among the particles can be observed. It also works the opposite way, the more heat or energy contained in a system the more entropy we can observe.

So now that we have basic knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics and entropy we can answer the following question.

It may look like the glass with the chips of ice has more entropy because it looks all disorganized in the inside, but because the water are frozen its molecules are moving at a slower rate than the ones in the glass with the warm water. Just as the laws say, the closer we're are to absolute zero the less entropy we'll have.

Here is another example:

The graph shows the relationship between entropy and temperature, and how it differs between the different states of matter.

The last topic in today's blog will be the definition of absolute zero.

Absolute zero can define as the lower limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reaches its minimum value, taken as 0. The theoretical temperature is determined by extrapolating the ideal gas law; by international agreement, absolute zero is taken as −273.15° on the Celsius scale which equates to −459.67° on the Fahrenheit scale.