The entropy will then increase proportionally to this amount. If one supplies heat to the ice/water bath, some of the ice will melt, and the number of states available to the water molecules will increase by a large amount, proportional to the amount of heat that was added to the system. Heat is energy transferred from one object to another because of a difference in temperature. In the context of thermodynamics, heat, like work, is defined as a transfer of energy. Where Q is the heat supplied to the system and T is the temperature of the system. Therefore, the most useful way to quantify a state property is to measure its change. Quantities that are state properties do not depend on the path by which the system arrived at its present state. Therefore, entropy can be considered a measure of the "disorder" of a system.Įntropy is a "state property," which is a quantity that depends only upon the current state of the system. When the container is opened, the entropy is said to increase. If the container is opened, the gas molecules escape and the number of configurations increases dramatically, essentially approaching infinity. For example, gas in a container with known volume, pressure, and temperature can have an enormous number of possible configurations of the individual gas molecules. The entropy of a system is a measure of the number of microscopic configurations the system can attain. This means that the change in entropy, ΔS, is always greater than or equal to zero. It states that the entropy of a system always increases over time or remains constant in ideal cases when a system is in a steady state or undergoing a "reversible process." If the system is undergoing an irreversible process, the entropy of the system will always increase. The second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental law of nature. Source: Ketron Mitchell-Wynne, PhD, Asantha Cooray, PhD, Department of Physics & Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA
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