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The question of why entropy increases until equilibrium is reached was answered in 1877 by physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The theory developed by Boltzmann and others, is known as statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics explains thermodynamics in terms of the statistical behavior of the atoms and molecules which make up the system.
Chemical reactions cause changes in entropy and system entropy, in conjunction with enthalpy, plays an important role in determining in which direction a chemical reaction spontaneously proceeds. One dictionary definition of entropy is that it is "a measure of thermal energy per unit temperature that is not available for useful work" in a ...
Entropy values of important substances may be obtained from reference works or with commercial software in tabular form or as diagrams. One of the most common diagrams is the temperature-entropy diagram (TS-diagram).
This is why entropy increases in natural processes – the increase tells how much extra microscopic information is needed to distinguish the initial macroscopically specified state from the final macroscopically specified state. [14] Equivalently, in a thermodynamic process, energy spreads.
For a system in which gravity is important, such as the universe, this is a low-entropy state (compared to a high-entropy state of having all matter collapsed into black holes, a state to which the system may eventually evolve). As the Universe grows, its temperature drops, which leaves less energy [per unit volume of space] available to ...
Rudolf Clausius - originator of the concept of "entropy". In his 1854 memoir, Clausius first develops the concepts of interior work, i.e. that "which the atoms of the body exert upon each other", and exterior work, i.e. that "which arise from foreign influences [to] which the body may be exposed", which may act on a working body of fluid or gas, typically functioning to work a piston.
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
The entropy of a closed system, determined relative to this zero point, is then the absolute entropy of that system. Mathematically, the absolute entropy of any system at zero temperature is the natural log of the number of ground states times the Boltzmann constant k B = 1.38 × 10 −23 J K −1.