Thermodynamic Entropy and Its Relation to Probability in Classical Mechanics
2011
A gas relaxing into equilibrium is often taken to be a process in which a system moves from an “improbable” to a “probable” state. Given that the thermodynamic entropy increases during such a process, it is natural to conjecture that the thermodynamic entropy is a measure of the probability of a macrostate. For nonideal classical gases, however, I claim that there is no clear sense in which the thermodynamic entropy of a macrostate measures its probability. We must therefore reject the idea that (in classical mechanics) thermodynamic entropy and probability are connected in a deep and general way.
Keywords:
- Configuration entropy
- Entropy (classical thermodynamics)
- Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory
- Thermodynamic system
- Thermodynamics
- Statistical physics
- Boltzmann's entropy formula
- Classical mechanics
- Maximum entropy thermodynamics
- Entropy (energy dispersal)
- Mathematics
- Microstate (statistical mechanics)
- Theoretical physics
- Thermodynamic state
- Entropy (statistical thermodynamics)
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