Entropy is one of the most important and most fundamental concepts in thermodynamics
Entropy is one of the most important and most fundamental concepts in thermodynamics. It is also one of the most frequently misunderstood concepts. In this assignment, you will research about entropy and write a 3-5 page informative essay describing what entropy is and how it relates to the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. Your description of entropy should be more than a simple definition; the purpose of the paper is for you to demonstrate your own understanding of this concept and how it is applied in the real world. The second part of the paper should describe what is meant by “heat death” of the Universe, and how this relates to entropy. Your discussion should include a statement of whether or not heat death is inevitable and a description of the reasons.
Sample Solution
There is yet another way of expressing the second law of thermodynamics. This version relates to a concept called entropy. By examining it, we shall see that the directions associated with the second law—heat transfer from hot to cold, for example—are related to the tendency in nature for systems to become disordered and for less energy to be available for use as work. The entropy of a system can in fact be shown to be a measure of its disorder and of the unavailability of energy to do work. Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. Entropy also describes how much energy is not available to do work. The more disordered a system and higher the entropy, the less of a system’s energy is available to do work.
