[Phys-l] Entropy

[chuck britton <britton@ncssm.edu>]

As usual, John has written an EXCELLENT intro to entropy is this  
'essay'.
Any one of us should be able to write up a similar exercise for any  
student down to middle-school at least.
It works for ME - so it should work for middle-schoolers ;-)

BUT - I've tripped of the deck of cards with multiple cuts.
I don't see how we can figure out the configuration with just six  
bits after two cuts.
You can get the top card - but not the rest of the configuration.
Maybe two cuts would require twelve bits? Six to locate EACH of the  
two cuts?

On Dec 15, 2008, at Dec 15(Mon) 12:22 , John Denker wrote:

> 3) Below energy (and the conservation thereof) comes entropy
>  (and the paraconservation thereof).  This includes a crisp
>  probability-based definition of entropy.
>    http://www.av8n.com/physics/thermo-laws.htm#sec-entropy
>
>  Entropy (like everything else) is hard if you do it wrong.
>  Most books do it wrong.  If you do it right, it's not so
>  hard.