<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 gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 11:47 PM Nicholas Thompson <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">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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