Friday, April 20, 2012

Entropy

Whenever I'm in my chemistry class I get worried about my eyes. There's a big periodic table that hangs on the wall on one side, and as you constantly refer to it to do chemistry-type things I've noticed how unable I am to read a lot of it. I always wonder if everyone else has trouble with it or just me. Today our teacher came in wearing glasses. He's never done it before or mentioned any inability to see. But today, he said we all looked weird and he couldn't read the large letters projected right in front of him. Weird.

Then we started talking about Entropy which is defined as a measurement of randomness or disorder. A seemingly theoretical concept that you would think is at best marginally related to Chemistry, but we're devoting time to it so I suppose it's relevant. Basically what was demonstrated is that naturally, nature goes from order -> disorder. Any natural order, when no energy is applied to keep it that way, will, over time, move toward disorder. This can be applied to chemistry in that substances move to less orderly states as they get warmer. Liquid's molecules are much less orderly than a solid's. He then went on to apply it to the universe in that the pre-big-bang state was much more ordered and as it continues to expand over time order moves toward disorder. But then, another student asked if (as previously mentioned) the universe is expanding and COOLING, then would it not be moving toward more order? Our teacher leaned back silent for a moment before explaining that the question delves into the area of dark energy. Theoretically, the universe will become so spread out that there will be no more visible light. Everything will be too far. And the force pulling us toward that is dark energy.

I suppose all this shows is that it's all a matter of perception and perspective. Food for thought.

1 comment:

  1. So are you saying that you don't understand some of the periodic table or you're eye site it making it hard to read? That seams like a very interesting conversation about the disorder and the universe. Reading that made me think of the big rip eventually all mater in the universe being torn apart by the expansion of the universe.

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