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Re: Entropy: quenched disorder is entropy



But the 'definition' you have proposed seems (to me) to rely on language and
principles from stat-mech. If that is the way entropy needs to be
approached, then how can it be done at any lower level. Leigh (I recall)
rejects any teaching of entropy at the HS level. How would you then
describe entropy to the HS student or to the intro level student in a
(non-major's) physics course?

Rick

My definition of most physics concepts are not those given to HS
students. My definition of momentum is equally incomprehensible to HS
students as my definitin of entropy is. That doesn't mean that I think
we shouldn't mention the concept of entropy in HS though.

I would merely say that the entropy of a thermodynamic system is the
logarithm of the number of different microscopic states that there
are such that, if the system is in any of them, it doesn't make any
difference in the system's properties as seen at the macroscopic level.
If a system can be in any of W different microscopic states such that
it doesn't make any difference at the macroscopic level, then the
entropy is k*ln(W). This is effectively Boltzmann's definition which he
came up with about 130 years ago.

David Bowman
David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu