What is Entropy Law?
Entropy Law:
Entropy Law is a formal recognition of the powerlessness mentioned above. In fact, it is one of the fundamental laws of nature and we would do well to know about it. Thus, Albert Einstein described it as the premier law of science. Sir Arthur Eddington. referred to it as the supreme metaphysical law of the entire universe and more recently, Barry Commoner has called it out most powerful insight into the way nature works. What this law says is very simple all matter and energy must be spontaneous and irreversible so that it is dissipated overtime.
The Sun is the clearest example of this dissipation. It loses mass at the rate of four million tonnes per second and a tiny fraction of the energy, which as a result, it radiates in all the direction, comes to use on the Earth and makes life possible. It is easy to see that this dissipation cannot be controlled or reversed. Similarly, when a piece of coal burnt, there is no way in which the resulting ash can be converted to coal again Or, when a bottle of perfume is left uncorked in a room, the molecules of the concentrated liquid escape into the room and then, outside.
There is no way to ‘capture’ these molecules and put them back into the bottle again. The Sun, the piece of coal and the bottle of perfume are definitely ordered structures. As such, they are available for doing specific work. Through dissipation, the Sun will in due course, become a disordered red giant and will not be available for warming the Earth. The piece of coal will become a disordered pile of ash and will, thus, become unavailable for boiling any more water.
This universal transformation of order to disorder is represented by an index called ‘Entropy’. A German physicist, Rudolf Classius, coined this term in 1868. It has two Greek roots: ‘en’ which means ‘in and trope which means. Together, they were intended by Classius to mean the transformation content. Generally, the entropy law suggests the limits within which we live and which,we cannot violate. Thus, when we convert a relatively disordered lump of iron ore into an ordered piece of iron and this into a still more ordered hammer, we certainly manage to create order, though it may only be some what localized.
But, we cannot create this order without creating more disorder in the total system. All sorts of buildings, roads, railway networks, factories, oil refineries, motor cars, bicycles, all pins and so on are examples of artificially created order. Soil erosion, water-logging, foul air, acid rain, polluted rivers are all illustrations of artificially created disorder. In other words pollution is only man-made entropy.
