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Topic: conservation of entropy?  (Read 10331 times)

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Offline kevinkevin

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conservation of entropy?
« on: June 09, 2012, 02:37:30 PM »
  It makes much sense to me that there would be a conservation of entropy.  As the randomness of one thing increases it will decrease the randomness of another thing.  I have tied to find a counter example but I can't.  When I brought it up to my teacher she said that we are heading towards more chaos.  The example she gave was the fact that our sun is going to expand and wipe out much of the inner solar system and then of course shed its outer layers to form a nice little nebula.  Now I thought, what about before our sun was born?  There was a lot of chaos in the formation of the sun, and all the processes should have been conserved,  energy and matter, all of that is conserved in the universe.  I think, that just like matter and energy, it was all set at the big bang, just like how matter and energy has now been spread out throughout the cosmos, I believe the entropy of the universe remains the same as a whole as well.  Can I get some feed back from this please.  I am trying to get this settled in my head so I can move on to my moon modeling project.  Thank you =)           

Offline Darren

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Re: conservation of entropy?
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2012, 01:36:40 AM »
Yes i kind of feel more strongly towards the conservation of entropy instead of the idea that we head towards an increase in entropy in the universe. When one thing loses entropy, something would most probably be transferred to the surroundings which increases its entropy in the surroundings, so overall there is no net change of entropy.

Offline Borek

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Re: conservation of entropy?
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2012, 04:23:49 AM »
Basically you are stating that second law of thermodynamics is wrong. Last time I checked it held fast.
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Offline Darren

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Re: conservation of entropy?
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2012, 04:39:45 AM »
Basically you are stating that second law of thermodynamics is wrong. Last time I checked it held fast.

But how do you account for the changes? What evidence is there to show that entropy, everywhere, increases only, no matter how much is transferred here and there? From what i know, if an object loses entropy, that entropy is transferred to the rest of the universe. So there is no net change.

Offline Steven Zhang

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Re: conservation of entropy?
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2018, 07:33:03 PM »
Basically you are stating that second law of thermodynamics is wrong. Last time I checked it held fast.
The second law of thermodynamics doesn't state that entropy must increase; it only states that it doesn't decrease. So I see no contradiction here.

Offline Corribus

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Re: conservation of entropy?
« Reply #5 on: October 30, 2018, 10:50:08 AM »
The second law of thermodynamics doesn't state that entropy must increase; it only states that it doesn't decrease. So I see no contradiction here.
True - but entropy only stays unchanged during an idealized reversible process. And in any case, the opening post proposes a conservation of entropy principle that by implication occurs during all processes. We certainly know that's not the case, since the second law allows for entropy to increase during a process.
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

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