Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time, sometimes called an arrow of time. As one goes "forward" in time, the second law of thermodynamics says, the entropy of an isolated system can increase, but not decrease. Thus, entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from ...
The inspiration for adopting the word entropy in information theory came from the close resemblance between Shannon's formula and very similar known formulae from statistical mechanics. In statistical thermodynamics the most general formula for the thermodynamic entropy S of a thermodynamic system is the Gibbs entropy
For example, in the Carnot cycle, while the heat flow from a hot reservoir to a cold reservoir represents the increase in the entropy in a cold reservoir, the work output, if reversibly and perfectly stored, represents the decrease in the entropy which could be used to operate the heat engine in reverse, returning to the initial state; thus the ...
The concept of thermodynamic entropy arises from the second law of thermodynamics.This law of entropy increase quantifies the reduction in the capacity of an isolated compound thermodynamic system to do thermodynamic work on its surroundings, or indicates whether a thermodynamic process may occur.
Despite the foregoing, there is a difference between the two quantities. The information entropy Η can be calculated for any probability distribution (if the "message" is taken to be that the event i which had probability p i occurred, out of the space of the events possible), while the thermodynamic entropy S refers to thermodynamic probabilities p i specifically.
Other applications exploit that entropy and internal energy are state functions whose change depends only on the initial and final states of the system, not on how the process occurred. [6] Therefore, the entropy and internal-energy change in a real process can be calculated quite easily by analyzing a reversible process connecting the real ...
Whether carried out reversible or irreversibly, the net entropy change of the system is zero, as entropy is a state function. During a closed cycle, the system returns to its original thermodynamic state of temperature and pressure. Process quantities (or path quantities), such as heat and work are process dependent.
Figure 1. A thermodynamic model system. Differences in pressure, density, and temperature of a thermodynamic system tend to equalize over time. For example, in a room containing a glass of melting ice, the difference in temperature between the warm room and the cold glass of ice and water is equalized by energy flowing as heat from the room to the cooler ice and water mixture.