<div dir="ltr"><div>Thanks Sarbajit, </div><div><br></div><div>George and I have been working on a way of understanding this asymmetry which is kinda neat. Here is George's summary of our conversation. The gist of it is that while you can bring chambers to the same temperature by heating and compressing, they are in different macrostates because aside effect of compression is an increase in density which heating does not produce. </div><div>See:</div><div><a href="https://chatgpt.com/canvas/shared/6865db6493e88191a9023926478b3c01" target="_blank">https://chatgpt.com/canvas/shared/6865db6493e88191a9023926478b3c01</a></div><div><br></div><div>Nick</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 4:08 PM Sarbajit Roy <<a href="mailto:sroy.mb@gmail.com" target="_blank">sroy.mb@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">It has been a very long time (too long) since I studied the 2nd law or Shannon. It's all very veiled and foggy just now, however,
I have often wondered if Entropy is fundamentally about ignorance, correlations, or something deeper?
</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 11:47 PM Nicholas Thompson <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com" target="_blank">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Long Suffering Friamers</div><div><br></div><div>I think I have now managed to come up with a macrostate statement of a phenomenon that requires entropy for its understanding. It parallels Lincoln's aphorism about fooling all of the people. </div><div><br></div><div><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">Assuming friction free and quasistatic motion and total insulation where appropriate:</b></div><div><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><br><div style="margin-left:40px"><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,</b><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">you can recover all that energy as work.</b></div><div style="margin-left:40px"><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><br><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">If you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating it,</b><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">you can recover all that energy as heating,</b></div><div style="margin-left:40px"><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><br><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">If you put a bunch of energy into a system by working on it,</b><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"> you can recover all that energy as heating.</b></div><div style="margin-left:40px"><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><br><span style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif"></span><b style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif">B<i>ut if you put a bunch of energy into a system by heating, you can NOT recover all of that energy as work. </i></b></div></div><div><br></div><div>I think this is the asymmetry that requires the invention of entropy.</div><div><br></div><div>Am I finally getting my Dux in a row?</div><div><br></div><div>Nick</div><br><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Nicholas S. Thompson</div><div>Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology</div><div>Clark University</div><div><a href="mailto:nthompson@clarku.edu" target="_blank">nthompson@clarku.edu</a></div><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson" target="_blank">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson</a></div></div></div>
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