What is entropy: Jul 23

Jul 23, 2025 ·Entropyis a scientific concept commonly associated with disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. It is a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered a property of the system's state. Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann explainedentropyas the measure of the number of possible microscopic arrangements or states of individual atoms and molecules of a system that comply with the macroscopic condition of the system. Importantly,entropyis a state function, like temperature or pressure, as opposed to a path function, like heat or work. This means that as a system changes inentropy, the change only depends on the entropies of the initial and final states, rather than the sequence (“path”) taken between the states. Entropyis a thermodynamic state function that measures the randomness or disorder of a system. It is an extensive property, meaningentropydepends on the amount of matter. Sinceentropymeasures disorder, a highly ordered system has lowentropy, and a highly disordered one has highentropy.Entropyis often called the arrow of time because matter tends to move from order to disorder in ...