Entropy or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

The first time I had ever heard of the term Entropy was when I was in my freshman year of college. But it wasn't in a physics class, or a math class even; it was in an English class.

One day we had an assignment in which we were given random words, and whatever random word we got, we had to write a one-page paper about. I guess it is easy to guess what word that I had drawn.

When I saw the word I didn't know what it meant, nor did I realize the can of worms that I was opening up by researching this term. I quickly fell down into the rabbit's hole and that's where I still find myself nearly 20 years later.

So what is it about Entropy that puts you into an eternal mental labyrinth? Simply put, Entropy is the reason why every story has an ending but ironically Entropy is the reason why any story ever starts to begin with.

There are many different ways to think about Entropy, what it is, what it means and why it can never be defeated. But Entropy is the reason why stars shine and why we, and everything else in the universe, will ultimately one day cease to exist forever.

But before we get to the end of the universe, we can start understanding Entropy right from your desk.


UNDERSTANDING ENTROPY

As time passes, it is inevitable that your desk will become messy, that is unless you make an effort to keep it clean. Introducing effort into a system will reduce its entropy. However, once effort is no longer introduced in the system, Entropy will increase and disorder will reign supreme. Chaos is king

But is it really disorder or something a little more sneaky. It's not really Chaos, is it? Chaos Theory is a whole other topic.

We all know what happens to our desk, to our bedrooms, to our house, to our cars, to ourselves if we don't keep them clean.

Everything including ourselves will become dirty, filthy, unhygienic, and messy. But why is that?


IT'S ALL ABOUT STATES AND PROBABILITY

So you can imagine that one state of your said bedroom is a state of complete order, cleanliness, and organization. However, while there seems to be just one state of complete order, there are uncountable amount of ways that your room could be messy. Because there are more countable states of disorder and a few countable states of order such that by probability alone, any system without added energy will tend toward disorder.  

Eventually, a state will form which allows for complete equilibrium. There will be a complete homogenous state. For a bedroom, the complete homogenous state would be stuff just strewn all over. the room. Maybe there will be some clothes in the closet, but there would be about an equal amount of clothes on your bed, on the floor and coming out of dresser draws.

If you have empty bags, food wrappers or beverage cans and bottles in your room, they too would be evenly distributed all over the room. Some might would be found on your desk, dresser, shelf or coffee table. If you were really messy, maybe some would be found in your bed and floor as well.

The higher the entropy, the more homogeneous your room would start to appear with everything kind of being equally distributed all over the place.


RE-SETTING ENTROPY (CLEANING YOUR ROOM)