Re: [Phys-l] MIT world video, "Teaching the Second Law"

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

curtis osterhoudt wrote:
>   Some professors weigh in on teaching the 2nd law of Thermo. Interesting takes on where students get hung up.
>
> http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/540/
>
>
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>  /************************************
> Down with categorical imperative!
> flutzpah@yahoo.com
> ************************************/
>   
Before I fell asleep at the wheel,  I heard one speaker offer that 
entropy is a sticking point with students on account of its time 
directionality. But, that one day, it might turn into a conservation law 
like energy-mass.

Which reminds me: there is at least one metaphysicist who notes that the 
universal property of entropy, which is to increase with time, leads 
immediately to the postdiction that in former ages, universal entropy 
was progressively lower with -T ending (beginning?) with a very cold 
very structured very small thing.... This conception is so unlikely that 
there might rather be some
uber-gestalt of constant entropy, from which, some universe of high 
entropy might appear, while another universe might issue, better 
corresponding to the low entropy predecession that we envisage.

Brian W