Re: Entropy

[jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu (James Mclean)]

David Bowman says:
> If one defines disorder in another way it may very well be possible to
> associate entropy with disorder.  For instance, if we say that a disordered
> state is one that requires a large amount of information to precisely
> characterize and a relatively ordered one is one that can be characterized
> with little information, then the association of disorder with entropy becomes 
> quite tight.
I don't see how this is substantially different from Doug's definition of
disorder.  He says disorder is when there is no "ordering rule" to describe
the configuration, implying that such a rule should be simple; you are
suggesting that disorder is when the configuration requires a lot of
information to define:  isn't that the same thing?

A question about the entropy of amorphous stuff at zero Kelvin: The
statistical mechanics definition of entropy usually involves some phrase
like "the number of microstates accessible to the system".  While the
amorphous stuff could have frozen into numerous microstates, once it is
frozen there is only one 'accessible' microstate.  I guess the buzzword is
the system isn't ergodic.

Can an entropy even be properly defined for such a system?

-- 
--James McLean
jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu
post doc
UCSD