Second Law of Thermodynamics

Full Title or Meme

The entropy of isolated systems left to spontaneous evolution cannot decrease, as they always arrive at a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where the entropy is highest at the given internal energy.

Context

• The original purpose of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was by Carnot in the determination of the maximum efficiency of steam engines.
• Boltzmann argued that the Second Law is statistical in nature and stated that while systems with increasing are possible, their occurrence could be assigned an extremely low probability.
• Boltzmann's solution in terms of large ensembles of point particles has become the field of Statistical Physics, which is the only physical law that is not deterministic.
• In communications and information sciences, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is typically addressed as a statement about information.
• From computer science Rolf Landauer used information theory to determine that while reversible computation was possible, the erasure of information always resulted in loss of energy.
• Now physicists are using Landauer's results to