Member-only story
Stop Saying Entropy is Disorder
We misunderstand entropy because we’re taught it’s a measure of disorder, but the real definition of entropy is far more useful and intuitive.
Look, I get it. You can’t throw a textbook at someone with no formal understanding of statistical mechanics when they ask a question. An answer that someone cannot understand is worth as much to them as no answer at all. Even taking this fact into account, you shouldn’t give someone a wrong answer because you think they can’t understand the right answer.
In this article, I’m going to explain entropy and how it has nothing to do with disorder. Since others have written about the history of the association, I won’t cover it in this article. I will also refrain from using any math that a middle school student couldn’t understand. I will explain a few technical terms to help you better understand entropy in case someone wants to know more. Although I will focus on a few specific examples, these concepts apply to far more than the scenarios I present.
Video
Some people prefer videos to articles and it’s a little easier to read, so I made a video to summarize this article.
