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physical property of the state of a system, measure of disorder
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Entropy is a thermodynamic state variable that quantifies the probabilistic distribution of accessible microstates in a system. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and the principles of information theory. It has far-ranging applications in chemistry and physics, in biological systems and their relation to life, in cosmology, economics, and information systems including the transmission of information in telecommunication.
Not who you're looking for? Others named entropy: only quantity in the physical sciences that requires a parti · property of thermodynamical systems · dispersal of energy as a descriptor of entropy · the adiabatic constant
“If I took a heavy weight on the floor here and pushed it, it would slide and stop. ... So, a frictional effect seems to be irreversible. ... a frictional effect ... is the result of enormous complexity of the interaction of the block with the wood ... the jiggling of the atoms inside the wood of the block is changed into disorganized irregular wiggle-waggles of the atoms in the wood.”
“There is nothing supernatural about the process of to states of higher entropy; it is a general property of systems, regardless of their materials and origin. It does not violate the Second Law of thermodynamics since the decrease in entropy within an open system is always offset by the increase of entropy in its surroundings.”
“In an isolated system, which cannot exchange energy and matter with the surroundings, this tendency is expressed in terms of a function of the macroscopic state of the system: the entropy.”
“Entropy... was discovered and exalted because it was essential to practical applications of physics... But by it science has been saved from a fatal narrowness. ...[T]here would have been nothing to represent "becoming" in the physical world.”
“[T]he device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (...low level of entropy) ...consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.”
“Clausius proposed... The entropy of an isolated system increases in any spontaneous change.”
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.