Posted: Jun 24, 2019 6:43 pm
hackenslash wrote:
As for the deck of cards thing, in reality, an ordered deck has only slightly lower entropy than a shuffled one. Such a system has greater entropy if the deck is scattered around the room. The reason for this is that, because it requires work to put the deck in order, entropy has been brought lower locally at the expense of an increase in entropy less locally, because energy has been expended in ordering it, and is thus unavailable for performing work.
I could spend five minutes working, continually shuffling the cards or I could spend five minutes putting them in order. Which "system" would have the higher entropy? Assuming the same "work" goes into ordering and shuffling?