Entropy demystified: the second law reduced to plain common sense

Arieh Ben-Naim9812700552, 978-981-270-055-1, 9789812700520, 9812700528

In this unique book, Arieh Ben-Naim invites the reader to experience the joy of appreciating something which has eluded understanding for many years entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The book has a two-pronged message: first, that the Second Law is not infinitely incomprehensible as commonly stated in textbooks of thermodynamics but can, in fact, be comprehended through sheer common sense; and second, that entropy is not a mysterious quantity that has resisted understanding but a simple, familiar and easily comprehensible concept. Written in an accessible style, the book guides the reader through an abundance of dice games and examples from everyday life. The author paves the way for readers to discover for themselves what entropy is, how it changes, and most importantly, why it always changes in one direction in a spontaneous process.

---

Table of contents :
Contents……Page 24
Preface……Page 10
1.1. The Non-Atomistic Formulation of the Second Law……Page 28
1.2. The Atomistic Formulation of the Second Law……Page 36
2 A Brief Introduction to Probability Theory, Information Theory, and all the Rest……Page 46
2.1. The Classical Definition……Page 58
2.2. The Relative Frequency Definition……Page 60
2.3. Independent Events and Conditional Probability……Page 64
2.4.1. Conditional probability and subjective probability……Page 69
2.4.2. Conditional probability and cause and effect……Page 73
2.4.3. Conditional probability and joint probability……Page 76
2.5. A Teaspoon of Information Theory……Page 78
2.6. A Tip of a Teaspoon of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry……Page 87
2.7. A Matter of Lottery……Page 94
2.8. A Matter of Order-Disorder……Page 96
2.9. A Challenging Problem……Page 97
2.10.1. Answers to the roulette problems……Page 100
2.10.2. Answer to “a matter of lottery”……Page 101
2.10.3. Answer to “a matter of order-disorder”……Page 102
2.10.4. Answer to “a challenging problem”……Page 103
3.1. One Die……Page 105
3.2. Two Dice……Page 106
3.3. Three Dice……Page 111
3.4. Four Dice and More……Page 113
4 Let’s Play with Simplified Dice and have a Preliminary Grasp of the Second Law……Page 119
4.1. Two Dice; N = 2……Page 122
4.2. Four Dice; N = 4……Page 125
4.3. Ten Dice; N = 10……Page 127
4.4. Hundred Dice; N = 100……Page 133
4.5. Thousand Dice; N = 1000……Page 135
4.6. Ten Thousand Dice; N = 104 and Beyond……Page 137
5 Experience the Second Law with all Your Five Senses……Page 143
5.1. See it with your Visual Sense……Page 144
5.2. Smell it with your Olfactory Sense……Page 146
5.3. Taste it with your Gustatory Sense……Page 149
5.4. Hear it with your Auditory Sense……Page 150
5.5. Feel it with your Touch (Tactile) Sense……Page 152
6 Finally, Grasp it with Your Common Sense……Page 156
7 Translating from the Dice-World to the Real World……Page 173
7.1. The Correspondence with the Expansion Process……Page 174
7.2. The Correspondence with the Deassimilation Process……Page 184
7.3. Summary of the Evolution of the System towards the Equilibrium State……Page 191
7.4. Mixing of Three Components……Page 199
7.5. Heat Transfer from a Hot to a Cold Gas……Page 201
7.6. Test Your Understanding of the Second Law……Page 207
8 Reflections on the Status of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a Law of Physics……Page 213
8.1. What is the Source of the Mystery?……Page 216
8.2. The Association of Entropy with “Disorder”……Page 223
8.3. The Association of Entropy with Missing Information……Page 226
8.4. Is the Second Law Intimately Associated with the Arrow of Time?……Page 235
8.5. Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics a Law of Physics?……Page 240
8.6. Can We Do Away with the Second Law?……Page 243
References and Suggested Reading……Page 246