Joe,
I quote from a physics text: "The second law of thermodynamics states that chemical reactions proceed spontaneously in the direction that corresponds to an increase in the disorder of the universe".
"The second law allows one to predict the direction of a particular reaction. But to make it useful for this purpose, one needs a convenient measure of the probability or, equivalently, the degree of disorder of a state. The ENTROPY is such a measure. It is a logarithmic function of the probability such that the change in entropy that occurs when the reaction A > B converts one mole of A into one mole of B is Delta S= R ln pB/pA where pA and pB are the probabilities of the two states A and B, R is the gas constant (2 cal deg-1 mole-1), and S is measured in entropy units(eu)."
The second law, therefore, has something to do with the increasing or decreasing of order in the universe and, furthermore, is, altough empirical, not as general as one might assume except that it is formulated to be general enough to allow application to situations involving changes in entropy in the universe in general.
BENNETT |
