The Entropy of Red Marbles
Sean Pitman
> >Now, lets say that you leave the room for a while and come back to
> >find the marbles in the box perfectly separated into two groups where
> >in one half of the box there are only red marbles while in the other
> >half there are only white marbles. What would you think? Would you
> >suppose this arrangement happened without intelligent guidance by
> >shaking the box? No, you wouldn't - But why?
>
> It would say absolutely nothing about intelligence - unless someone
> had required beforehand that the marbles were to be arranged in that
> way. It is answered precisely by the point I was making about
> entropy. Shake up a box of coloured marbles and there are a billion
> arrangements they could fall into. Absolutely ANY arrangement is as
> likely as any other - including the arrangement of half red and half
> white. The fact that they will usually look jumbled up when you open
> the box is that, out of all the possible arrangements, far more would
> look jumbled up than would look patterned. Any particular arrangement
> (whether a jumbled one or not) becomes significant only if it is
> predicted. That is all there is to it.
Consider that entropy is a statistical measure of the likelihood that
a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
container. The box that contains the marbles is divided up into
imaginary grid of squares, each the size of one of our marbles. In
this thought experiment, entropy is a measure of the statistical
likelihood that one of our imaginary squares, chosen at random, will
contain a red marble (vs. a white marble). The entropy of the system
as a whole increases as each box becomes just as likely as all the
other boxes of being occupied by a red marble. When this happens, the
system is said to have reached, "maximum entropy".
As we know, all systems tend toward maximum entropy unless acted upon
by an outside source of *directed* energy. Simply applying more
non-directed or "random" energy to a system will not cause the system
to leave its maximum entropic state.
For example, heating a container of gas will only make the gas
molecules move faster, but it will not make them leave their state of
maximum statistical entropy for that container. Likewise, removing
heat from this container will only result in the gas molecules moving
more slowly, but they will still be at maximum entropy (Even a
snowflake is at maximum entropy if in a stable state).
Of course, there are ways to cause this system to have less than
maximum entropy or homogeny. For example, if all the molecules were
gathered together in one corner of the container and then released
suddenly. At the moment of release, they would start to spread out
throughout the container again. Why? Because they are not at their
maximum level of entropy or homogeny yet. They are therefore moving
from a state of very low statistical likelihood to a state of maximum
statistical likelihood.
All systems do this. They all wish to achieve a state of maximum
statistical likelihood, entropy, homogeny, or whatever term you like
to call it.
So, how do you get a system to go the other direction . . . away from
maximum entropy? Is the simple addition of extra energy to the system
enough? No, it isn't. Try it and see. Get a pot of homogenous goop
and put it on the stove to heat it up and see what happens. All
you'll end up with is hot homogenous goop. The same thing can be done
with a container of gas. Heat it up and all you have is hot evenly
distributed gas in the chamber. Obviously then, disordered energy, in
the form of heat or the removal of heat, is not enough to get a system
to move away from maximum entropy. What then is needed?
It seems to me that what is needed is directed outside energy coming
from a source of higher informational complexity than that contained
by the system in question. This produces a non-random energy source to
act on the homogenous system at maximum entropy moving its
constituents to less likely locations thereby giving the system
less-than-maximum entropy (i.e., the ability to perform "usable
work").
This brings us back to our box of red and white marbles.
Statistically, the red and white marbles wish to achieve maximum
entropy or statistical likelihood for every one of an infinite number
of positions within the box. This means that the marbles will tend
toward a very homogenous mixture as the box is supplied with
disordered non-directed energy (i.e., random shaking of the box). In
fact, this tendency is so strong that, given a large enough number of
molecules, it would literally take trillions of years of average time
to get all the red marbles to cluster together again in a very
non-homogenous way in one corner of the box. This prediction is so
reliable that the finding of a non-homogenous state of low red-marble
entropy in this box is very good evidence of an outside source of
higher informational complexity and directly energy interacting with
the marbles in the box.
Howard Hershey
There is a difference between a *random* distribution of particles in
space or area and a *homogeneous* distribution of particles. Please
make that distinction, or we will think that you don't know what your
talking about.
>
> It seems to me that what is needed is directed outside energy coming
> from a source of higher informational complexity than that contained
> by the system in question. This produces a non-random energy source to
> act on the homogenous system at maximum entropy moving its
> constituents to less likely locations thereby giving the system
> less-than-maximum entropy (i.e., the ability to perform "usable
> work").
>
> This brings us back to our box of red and white marbles.
> Statistically, the red and white marbles wish to achieve maximum
Marbles cannot "wish" anything.
> entropy or statistical likelihood for every one of an infinite number
> of positions within the box. This means that the marbles will tend
> toward a very homogenous mixture as the box is supplied with
> disordered non-directed energy (i.e., random shaking of the box). In
> fact, this tendency is so strong that, given a large enough number of
> molecules, it would literally take trillions of years of average time
> to get all the red marbles to cluster together again in a very
> non-homogenous way in one corner of the box.
However, if I were to perform the same experiment with sand and large
pebbles in a pail, I would find a very non-random distribution after
random shaking. If I were to perform the same experiment with a flat
surface and iron and glass marbles in a strong magnetic field (not
necessarily applied by an intelligent agent, as essentially the same
thing -- a very non-random orientation of magnetic materials -- occurs
in solidifying rocks), I also would find a very non-random distribution
after shaking. It appears that the randomness (not homogeneity) seen
after shaking is more than somewhat dependent upon the starting and
ending environmental conditions.
William
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
I am posting my response again here because you have started a new
thread for this topic.
That is exactly what I said. The 'trillion years' depends on how many
marbles there are - you can do the sums. It depends solely on the
number of arrangements the marbles can fall into - any particular one
is as likely as any other. No arrangement has any significance over
any other. See below.
>This prediction is so
>reliable that the finding of a non-homogenous state of low red-marble
>entropy in this box is very good evidence of an outside source of
>higher informational complexity and directly energy interacting with
>the marbles in the box.
Entropy is exactly as I explained. Whenever you shake a box of marbles
they will fall into some arrangement. No arrangement is more
'significant' than any other - even if it spelled out the word
'hello'. The fact that you see patterns in some and not others is
completely irrelevant. If the total number of possible arrangements
that they can fall into is one billion then the chances of ANY
particular arrangement occurring is 1 in one billion. Therefore, the
chance of the current arrangement being repeated on shaking the box is
1 in one billion.
Since, by shaking the box, any state is as equally likely as any other
state it tells you absolutely nothing about intelligence - unless you
abandon the idea that shaking the box gave a random result. But, of
course, to do that you will have already postulated some non-random
outside influence so the argument that it points to such an influence
becomes circular.
William
William
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
Following on from my previous response; since you have started a new
thread I will go into this question in more depth.
Entropy is concerned with the WHOLE arrangement of the marbles. The
fact that there is a 50/50 chance of a red marble being on one spot
only tells you about THAT spot. The chances reduce as you take more
and more marble arrangements into the calculation. By taking the total
number of marbles into consideration you have to calculate how many
possible arrangement this complete number can take. Start with a total
number of 4 and then work up to a total number of 1000 and see how the
figures go!!
>As we know, all systems tend toward maximum entropy unless
>acted upon by an outside source of *directed* energy. Simply
>applying more non-directed or "random" energy to a system will
>not cause the system to leave its maximum entropic state.
That is so only in systems where there are local changes - (ie, where
some molecules are agitated and not others, as in heat exchange). And
the reason for that is that subsequent states simply move away from
the original state in smaller increments. If there was one total
'shake-up' then the shaken state would be as far from (or near) the
original as any other. Total entropy says absolutely nothing about
what particular arrangement state (1) had to be - or what particular
arrangement state (2) has to be.
If the starting state had the marbles/molecules in an arrangement that
looked random (ie, no perceivable pattern) and the end state (after a
full shake-up) had them arranged where they spelled out the word
'done' then that would still be the total entropy state.
William
Howard Hershey
Specifically, Sean is choosing to present an example (red and white
marbles) where the distinguishing trait, color, is "unseen" by the
selecting conditions (shaking the box). The examples I gave, OTOH, were
examples where the distinguishing trait, size in one case and ability to
be affected by magnetic fields in the other, are cases where the
'marbles' have features that are discriminated between by the selective
conditions of the dumb, unintelligent environment they are in.
Which type of situation more closely resembles the conditions that
living organisms face is something that needs to be determined on a case
by case basis for particular traits. Both mechanisms exist.
However, unlike the case that Sean gives, neutral selection actually
works as a random walk for a population over generations rather than a
single event for an unchanging population. The consequences of such a
walk is not (eventually) sheer randomness that is retained indefinitely.
Rather it is stochastic fixation of one or the other neutral traits and
loss of the other. Specifically, if one starts with 30% allele A and
70% allele a and the two alleles are selectively neutral relative to one
another in the local environment, *eventually*, through a random walk,
one will have fixation of allele A 30% of the time and fixation of
allele a 70% of the time. So his description of red and white marbles
is irrelevant even on that point.
Matt Silberstein
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
[snip]
>So, how do you get a system to go the other direction . . . away from
>maximum entropy? Is the simple addition of extra energy to the system
>enough? No, it isn't. Try it and see. Get a pot of homogenous goop
>and put it on the stove to heat it up and see what happens. All
>you'll end up with is hot homogenous goop. The same thing can be done
>with a container of gas. Heat it up and all you have is hot evenly
>distributed gas in the chamber. Obviously then, disordered energy, in
>the form of heat or the removal of heat, is not enough to get a system
>to move away from maximum entropy. What then is needed?
Now try this, add a source at one end and a sink at the other. That
is, heat the pot from bottom and cool it from the top. You get some
nice convection currents and such. Now take a really large "pot", say
the Earth, add the heat of the Sun on one side and the cool of space
on the other and see what patterns you get.
>It seems to me that what is needed is directed outside energy coming
>from a source of higher informational complexity than that contained
>by the system in question.
How do you measure "informational complexity"? (Something tells me you
have avoided that question in the past.)
>This produces a non-random energy source to
>act on the homogenous system at maximum entropy moving its
>constituents to less likely locations thereby giving the system
>less-than-maximum entropy (i.e., the ability to perform "usable
>work").
Is the light from the Sun "random"? Or are those hot photons
"informationally complex"? If not please tell me how you know.
[snip]
--
Matt Silberstein
Do in order to understand.
rich hammett
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:58:17 +0000 (UTC),
> seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
> [snip]
>>So, how do you get a system to go the other direction . . . away from
>>maximum entropy? Is the simple addition of extra energy to the system
>>enough? No, it isn't. Try it and see. Get a pot of homogenous goop
>>and put it on the stove to heat it up and see what happens. All
>>you'll end up with is hot homogenous goop. The same thing can be done
>>with a container of gas. Heat it up and all you have is hot evenly
>>distributed gas in the chamber. Obviously then, disordered energy, in
>>the form of heat or the removal of heat, is not enough to get a system
>>to move away from maximum entropy. What then is needed?
> Now try this, add a source at one end and a sink at the other. That
> is, heat the pot from bottom and cool it from the top. You get some
> nice convection currents and such. Now take a really large "pot", say
> the Earth, add the heat of the Sun on one side and the cool of space
> on the other and see what patterns you get.
Also, if your soup is complex enough, you'll likely have compounds
that are near some sort of phase change or other critical point,
and can ratchet on up to create and store state.
rich
>>It seems to me that what is needed is directed outside energy coming
>>from a source of higher informational complexity than that contained
>>by the system in question.
> How do you measure "informational complexity"? (Something tells me you
> have avoided that question in the past.)
>>This produces a non-random energy source to
>>act on the homogenous system at maximum entropy moving its
>>constituents to less likely locations thereby giving the system
>>less-than-maximum entropy (i.e., the ability to perform "usable
>>work").
> Is the light from the Sun "random"? Or are those hot photons
> "informationally complex"? If not please tell me how you know.
> [snip]
--
-to reply, it's hot not warm
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
\ Rich Hammett http://home.hiwaay.net/~rhammett
/ "Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world;
\ than the pride that divides
/ when a colorful rag is unfurled."
puppe...@hotmail.com
[snip]
> As we know, all systems tend toward maximum entropy unless acted upon
> by an outside source of *directed* energy. Simply applying more
> non-directed or "random" energy to a system will not cause the system
> to leave its maximum entropic state.
Um. No. Changes in the thermodynamic state of a system can produce
increases or decreases in the entropy. There is no such thing as
"direted" energy in this context. If energy flows into out out of
a system, that system can change its entropy.
And most particularly, it does not matter whether there is any
intelligence involved. A forest fire started by lighting can
result in various parts of the forest changing their entropy.
[snip]
> So, how do you get a system to go the other direction . . . away from
> maximum entropy? Is the simple addition of extra energy to the system
> enough? No, it isn't. Try it and see. Get a pot of homogenous goop
> and put it on the stove to heat it up and see what happens. All
> you'll end up with is hot homogenous goop.
Except for the systems that don't work that way. Plenty of systems
will spontaneously order themselves if heated. Refer to such things
as curing of composites through heat.
And further, order in this sense, and entropy, have only the vaguest
of hazy relationships. And it's not a trivial question to answer if
in any given system having a lot of order means more or less entropy.
Order in some systems is the spontaneous direction, in others not.
You don't have a good understanding of entropy if
you are basing it on simple order notions such as "all the red
marbles on one side, all the white on the other => low entropy"
because that's not it. It's quite a bit more complicated than that.
You would need about a week with a good stat-mech text to see it.
You can have the entropy anything you want it
to be. And it does not make any difference if there is intelligence
involved or not. If a process can happen at all, it does not violate
the 2nd law. It does not matter whether it happens with a living
critter there or not.
Socks
Sean Pitman
If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
interference has taken place as well as something about that
interference?
We know that at maximum entropy the gas in a container and/or the red
and white marbles in our box will be distributed in the most likely
statistical locations so that no one location is any more likely to be
occupied by a molecule of gas or by a red marble than any other
location. This is a statistically measurable number for this system
and this number is different for different arrangements of marbles or
molecules.
For argument's sake lets say that the maximum entropy for a system is
assigned the number 100 meaning that when the entropy scale hits the
100 mark the red marbles are in their most likely positions. Let's
also say that the minimum entropy for our system is assigned the
number 1 on our scale meaning that the red marbles are in their most
unlikely positions. We know that if our box of marbles starts off
with an entropy of 1 that it WILL move toward an entropy of 100 as
random/chaotic energy is added to the box (i.e., the box is vigorously
shaken for a period of time). We also know that, although possible,
the overall entropy of the box of marbles will never head back very
far towards 1. Once the box has reached its maximum entropy of 100,
it may fluctuate just a bit in the high 90s for very brief periods of
time, but, with a box of a thousand or so marbles, it will never go
back to 1 no matter how long the box is shaken.
Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
is just as likely as every other arrangement. This is clearly
incorrect. Certain arrangements are far more statistically likely
since various possible arrangements do not all carry the same entropic
value. Some arrangements do in fact have far greater entropic value
(i.e., are much more statistically likely) than do other potential
arrangements of marbles and molecules. Given this ability to assign a
different statistical likelihood to various different arrangements of
marbles, I can say, with a great deal of predictive value, that a
particular arrangement is extremely unlikely to be the result of
shaking the box. I could even predict, with a very high degree of
accuracy, that certain arrangements of the marbles were in fact the
result of deliberate outside manipulation by a much higher order of
informational complexity. I can even demonstrate that this is true in
a real life experiment over and over again.
Now, certainly an arrangement of marbles having a high entropic value
(in the high 90s) can be intelligently arranged. In such a situation
I would not be able to detect the activity of outside design over a
random shaking of the box. However, if after knowing that the marbles
in the box were at a very high state of entropic value I saw that they
now were arranged in such a way that their entropic value was quite
low, say in the 10s, that would be extremely good evidence that the
marbles had been manipulated by intelligent design. (Given, of course,
that the only difference between the red and white marbles was color
alone).
It's kinda like gambling in Las Vegas. For example, imagine a Las
Vegas game called, "490" The minimum bet for this game is $10
dollars. What happens in this game is that 1000 pennies are put into a
glass jar 10 feet above the ground. The jar is then turned over and
all the pennies spill out onto a circular area of polished marble
surrounded by a little glass wall to keep the pennies from rolling or
bouncing too far away. This circle is divided into two halves by a
thin red line. Just before the pennies are poured onto the floor in
the middle of the circle, you are asked to call "heads or tails". You
call heads. If at least 490 of the 1000 pennies end up on heads on
the same side of red line, then you win a million dollars. All you
have to get is at least 490 heads on the same side. You don't think
that sounds like very good odds? I don't blame you. However, what if
you only had to get at least 10 heads on the same side of the red line
to win? We'd all be running to Vegas now wouldn't we?!
Are you starting to see how some types of patterns are much more
likely than others? All patterns and arrangements do not carry the
same statistical value. Certainly, if you are looking for just one
very specific pattern where each and every marble is numbered and all
the numbers must be in a very specific place, then yes, you'd be
correct in saying that all patterns have the same statistical value.
But, when any old red marble will do in a given red marble pattern,
then all patterns are not equally likely.
Try it out yourself and see if this assertion of mine is not true.
Have a friend of yours shake a box of different colored marbles (or
colored pieces of punched out paper) while you are outside of the
room. Then, have your friend open the box and either leave it as is
or manipulate the marbles deliberately to make either apparently
"random" arrangements or more "orderly" patterns as your friend sees
fit. Then, have your friend call you back into the room when ready.
Your job will be to see if you can detect intelligent manipulation vs.
shaking. You will either say that the pattern before you could be the
result of "either shaking or manipulation" or "manipulation alone".
Do this many times and see how often you are right and wrong when you
recognize that "only manipulation" could have produced a given pattern
of marbles in the box. See if you are not right nearly 100% of the
time if you set your threshold for detecting low entropic states low
enough and if you use 1,000 or so marbles or punched out pieces of
paper, or something equivalent.
Sean Pitman
> Except for the systems that don't work that way. Plenty of systems
> will spontaneously order themselves if heated.
And such systems will still be at their maximum entropic state. The
fact is that if a system is at maximum entropy adding heat to such a
system will not remove that system from a state of maximum entropy.
Even a supposedly "ordered" system may in fact be in a state of
maximum entropy. This is a key concept to grasp. The addition of
heat may change the energy content of a system, but non-ordered
chaotic energy does not remove the system from a state of maximum
entropy.
> Refer to such things
> as curing of composites through heat.
Does the curing of composites start with a system already at maximum
entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
less than maximum entropic state?
> And further, order in this sense, and entropy, have only the vaguest
> of hazy relationships. And it's not a trivial question to answer if
> in any given system having a lot of order means more or less entropy.
> Order in some systems is the spontaneous direction, in others not.
You aren't looking at this problem correctly. You must look at the
system as a self-contained whole. You must not compare it to other
systems. You must ask if this system is at its own internal maximum
level of entropy. The question is not if this system is more
"ordered" than other system. That really doesn't matter at all. A
very "ordered" system may be just as much at its own maximum level of
entropy as another very "disordered" system.
> You don't have a good understanding of entropy if
> you are basing it on simple order notions such as "all the red
> marbles on one side, all the white on the other => low entropy"
I'm not talking about low or high entropy relative to other systems.
What I am talking about is maximum and less than maximum entropy of
the single system in question. When all the red marbles occupy only
one half of the box, they are not at their maximum level of entropy.
The same is true if all the molecules of a gas are on one side of
container, which would otherwise allow the molecules of gas to move
freely to the other side. This system is obviously below its maximum
level of entropy (i.e., at a very low level of statistical likelihood)
regardless of how this system relates to any other system.
> because that's not it. It's quite a bit more complicated than that.
> You would need about a week with a good stat-mech text to see it.
I'm not sure how more it would take to get you to understand that
maximum entropy has nothing to do with having "a lot" or "a little"
entropy. Maximum is maximum regardless of the level of apparent
"order" or "disorder" of a system.
> You can have the entropy anything you want it
> to be. And it does not make any difference if there is intelligence
> involved or not.
That is where you are wrong when it comes to getting a system to leave
a state of maximum entropy.
> If a process can happen at all, it does not violate
> the 2nd law. It does not matter whether it happens with a living
> critter there or not.
I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
law. What I am talking about is the difference between random energy
(i.e., heat) and ordered or directed energy. Random energy can only
be turned into directed energy by a system that is not yet at maximum
entropy - such as a living thing. A living thing can enter or affect
other systems that are at a state of maximum entropy. The living
thing is capable of doing something very interesting with random
energy. It is able to order random disordered energy into a
directable force. The application of random energy (which is itself at
maximum entropy) cannot, by itself, cause a system of gas molecules
already at maximum entropy to leave the state of maximum entropy.
Maximum entropy plus maximum entropy does not create less than maximum
entropy. However, random energy, filtered through a process that
orders the random energy, can affect the system of gas molecules so
that their entropy is reduced below its maximum. In other words,
directed energy can force all the gas molecules in a chamber onto one
side of that chamber. Random energy cannot do this - right?
> Socks
Sean Pitman
> Except for the systems that don't work that way. Plenty of systems
> will spontaneously order themselves if heated.
And such systems will still be at their maximum entropic state. The
fact is that if a system is at maximum entropy adding heat to such a
system will not remove that system from a state of maximum entropy.
Even a supposedly "ordered" system may in fact be in a state of
maximum entropy. This is a key concept to grasp. The addition of
heat may change the energy content of a system, but non-ordered
chaotic energy does not remove the system from a state of maximum
entropy.
> Refer to such things
> as curing of composites through heat.
Does the curing of composites start with a system already at maximum
entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
less than maximum entropic state?
> And further, order in this sense, and entropy, have only the vaguest
> of hazy relationships. And it's not a trivial question to answer if
> in any given system having a lot of order means more or less entropy.
> Order in some systems is the spontaneous direction, in others not.
You aren't looking at this problem correctly. You must look at the
system as a self-contained whole. You must not compare it to other
systems. You must ask if this system is at its own internal maximum
level of entropy. The question is not if this system is more
"ordered" than other systems. That really doesn't matter at all. A
very "ordered" system may be just as much at its own maximum level of
entropy as another very "disordered" system.
> You don't have a good understanding of entropy if
> you are basing it on simple order notions such as "all the red
> marbles on one side, all the white on the other => low entropy"
I'm not talking about low or high entropy relative to other systems.
What I am talking about is maximum and less than maximum entropy of
the single system in question. When all the red marbles occupy only
one half of the box, they are not at their maximum level of entropy.
The same is true if all the molecules of a gas are on one side of
container, which would otherwise allow the molecules of gas to move
freely to the other side. This system is obviously below its maximum
level of entropy (i.e., at a very low level of statistical likelihood)
regardless of how this system relates to any other system.
> because that's not it. It's quite a bit more complicated than that.
> You would need about a week with a good stat-mech text to see it.
I'm not sure how much more it would take to get you to understand that
maximum entropy has nothing to do with having "a lot" or "a little"
entropy. Maximum is maximum regardless of the level of apparent
"order" or "disorder" of a system.
> You can have the entropy anything you want it
> to be. And it does not make any difference if there is intelligence
> involved or not.
That is where you are wrong when it comes to getting a system to leave
a state of maximum entropy.
> If a process can happen at all, it does not violate
> the 2nd law. It does not matter whether it happens with a living
> critter there or not.
I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
Eros
That's nice. If ID is an alternative to current thinking in biology,
what exactly is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design? What
predictions does the theory make, and how can they be tested? Is the
theory of ID able to be confirmed or falsified using the scientific
method? If so, how?
Is the "designer" your god? If so, what evidence do you have to
support that claim... if not, then how does ID support fundamentalist
Creationism in any way at all? If, on the other hand, the identity of
the "designer" is irrelevant, then logically, so is the purpose of the
"design". But, surely if you can "tell" something is "designed" you
infer it has some relevant purpose. How do Creationists/IDists resolve
this paradox?
EROS.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The proof in support of creation science consisted almost entirely of
efforts to discredit the theory of evolution through a rehash of data
and theories which have been before the scientific community for
decades. The arguments asserted by creationists are not based upon new
scientific evidence or laboratory data which has been ignored by the
scientific community." -- Judge William Overton - McLean v Arkansas,
1981)
Bennett Standeven
>
> If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
> consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
> nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
> interference has taken place as well as something about that
> interference?
>
> We know that at maximum entropy the gas in a container and/or the red
> and white marbles in our box will be distributed in the most likely
> statistical locations so that no one location is any more likely to be
> occupied by a molecule of gas or by a red marble than any other
> location. This is a statistically measurable number for this system
> and this number is different for different arrangements of marbles or
> molecules.
>
No; you need to establish a partition on the arrangements; then you
can calculate the entropy of the partition, based on the number of
arrangements belonging to that partition class.
For example, if we draw a line across the box, we could define a
partition based on the ratio of red to white marbles on each side of
the box. Then the maximum entropy class is the one with the same
red/white ratios on each side as in the whole box. The distibutions in
this class are not more likely than the ones with other ratios, there
are just more of them.
>
> Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
> arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
> is just as likely as every other arrangement.
It is.
[...]
> Certainly, if you are looking for just one
> very specific pattern where each and every marble is numbered and all
> the numbers must be in a very specific place, then yes, you'd be
> correct in saying that all patterns have the same statistical value.
You've got the right idea, but you need to number the positions of the
marbles, not the marbles themselves. Then you will see that all
positions are indeed equally likely.
Bennett Standeven
>
> and white marbles in our box will be distributed in the most likely
> statistical locations so that no one location is any more likely to be
> occupied by a molecule of gas or by a red marble than any other
> location. This is a statistically measurable number for this system
> and this number is different for different arrangements of marbles or
> molecules.
>
No; you need to establish a partition on the arrangements; then you
can calculate the entropy of the partition, based on the number of
arrangements belonging to that partition class.
For example, if we draw a line across the box, we could define a
partition based on the ratio of red to white marbles on each side of
the box. Then the maximum entropy class is the one with the same
red/white ratios on each side as in the whole box. The distibutions in
this class are not more likely than the ones with other ratios, there
are just more of them.
>
> Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
> arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
> is just as likely as every other arrangement.
It is.
[...]
> Certainly, if you are looking for just one
> very specific pattern where each and every marble is numbered and all
> the numbers must be in a very specific place, then yes, you'd be
> correct in saying that all patterns have the same statistical value.
You've got the right idea, but you need to number the positions of the
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
> tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote in message
news:<40fe4aa6...@news-text.blueyonder.co.uk>...
>
> If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
> consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
> nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
> interference has taken place as well as something about that
> interference?
If the molecules of oil and water separate in a jar overnight, do we assume
the interference of elves? Or do we perhaps look for another explanation?
If I leave town, and my brother-in-law watches my well-ordered apartment
while I am away; when I come back and everything is in disorder, do I blame
entropy?
Perhaps, we should apply our knowledge rather than our ignorance to solving
the riddle.
William
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
You appear not to have read either of the responses I made to your
post.
>If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
>consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
>nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
>interference has taken place as well as something about that
>interference?
Systems (eg molecules in a liquid or gas) head towards maximum entropy
as they are disturbed. Maximum entropy occurs when the WHOLE system
has been randomly disturbed and reached a new arrangement of its
components. If the original arrangement was a random one then the new
arrangement is a NEW random arrangement. That is all. If the system is
only partially disturbed then the second state still contains elements
from the first state (entropy has not reached maximum). There is
absolutely no significance in either the first arrangement of
molecules or the last one - other than that the last arrangement has a
random relationship to the first one. The probabilities of any
particular arrangement occurring are 1 in X (where X is the number of
possible arrangements of the molecules in the whole system). There is,
therefore, a probability of the arrangement of molecules at maximum
entropy being identical to that at minimum entropy (the starting
state). This arrangement is no more and no less likely than ANY other
arrangement.
Therefore any particular arrangement of the molecules tells you
absolutely nothing, in itself, about an intelligent influence. To
detect such an influence you would have to be able to make testable
predictions about what particular arrangement will occur in the
system. And you would have to eliminate all possible physical biases.
Having read further in your post I believe you have misunderstood what
entropy is, and on what basis it could indicate an intelligent
influence.
William
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
Let's start with a homogeneous pot of soup. (We make it homogeneous by
stirring.) Add heat. (We usually do this with a stove.) At first we notice
that some of the liquid turns to steam which then condenses to droplets of
pure water on the pot lid. Amazingly, our mixture is already already
heterogeneous. Now, let's turn up the heat. The soup starts to boil, and
more water is turned to steam. Our pot lid rattles a bit to let the steam
out, and our soup is starting to become more concentrated, and a film of
concentrated soup forms on the surface. With enough heat, the soup comes to
a full boil, and turbulence abounds. The soup is no longer anywhere near a
state of uniformity, but pressure waves churn throughout the mixture. We
stir the soup to help it return to a more stable state, but we notice that
there is this thick substance on the bottom of the pot. We scrap some of it
off, and bring it to the surface. Yum! Tastes good. We note that the
scrappings are not the quite same as the rest of the soup, but have been
transformed. Stir frequently.
Why do we stir, Sean? We stir because the heated soup tends to become more
heterogeneous. Funny how a little heat will change a homogeneous mixture of
vegetables and water into a heterogeneous feast. "It's a good thing."
Sean Pitman
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 02:54:28 +0000 (UTC),
> seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>
> >tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
>
> You appear not to have read either of the responses I made to your
> post.
Actually I did, three times. If you had read my entire post before
responding, perhaps you would have realized this.
> >If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
> >consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
> >nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
> >interference has taken place as well as something about that
> >interference?
>
> Systems (eg molecules in a liquid or gas) head towards maximum entropy
> as they are disturbed. Maximum entropy occurs when the WHOLE system
> has been randomly disturbed and reached a new arrangement of its
> components.
Good so far . . .
> If the original arrangement was a random one then the new
> arrangement is a NEW random arrangement. That is all.
That is not all. Various potential arrangements carry with them
different statistical likelihoods or entropic values. That is why a
system can actually head toward maximum entropy. How do you think
maximum entropy "looks" compared to a system that has not yet reached
maximum entropy? Entropy is a statistical calculation made on the
basis of the distribution of the constituents of a system to their
"most likely" locations. A system at maximum entropy actually looks
quite different from one that is far away from maximum entropy. You
can actually see the difference.
> If the system is
> only partially disturbed then the second state still contains elements
> from the first state (entropy has not reached maximum).
And how can you recognize this? Can you see a difference? Is this
difference statistically calculable even if you didn't know what the
initial starting point of the system was? In other words, can you
simply walk up to a system for the first time, look at it, and know
how far away it is from maximum entropy at that instant in time? Yes,
you can. The pattern of maximum entropy is quite different from the
pattern of a system that has not yet reached maximum entropy.
> There is
> absolutely no significance in either the first arrangement of
> molecules or the last one - other than that the last arrangement has a
> random relationship to the first one.
No significance to first and last arrangements of molecules? You've
got to be joking. Have you ever read that a characteristic of a system
that has not yet reached maximum entropy is the ability to obtain
"useful work" from it?
For example, imagine two boxes, Box A and Box B connected to each
other by a tube. Say that all the molecules of a gas start off in Box
A. If allowed to go to Box B, they will quickly move through the tube
connecting Box A and Box B in such a way that they would turn a fan
appropriately situated in the tube. However, as soon as equilibrium
is reached between Box A and Box B, the fan will stop turning. The
system is now at its maximum level of entropy.
You can see then that there was a very big difference, a measurable
difference, between the "pattern" of molecules in the first as
compared to the last arrangement. In fact, this difference was
detectably different at each point in time until maximum entropy was
reached for this system. Once maximum entropy is reached for a system
it will stay there. Although various specific patterns may be
detectable at maximum entropy, all of these patterns observed over
time will carry with them very similar entropic values that are all
much different from those non-maximum entropic patterns or
"arrangements".
> The probabilities of any
> particular arrangement occurring are 1 in X (where X is the number of
> possible arrangements of the molecules in the whole system). There is,
> therefore, a probability of the arrangement of molecules at maximum
> entropy being identical to that at minimum entropy (the starting
> state). This arrangement is no more and no less likely than ANY other
> arrangement.
You are very mistaken. Entropy does not work like this at all.
Different arrangements of molecules along the potential entropic
spectrum carry with them very different statistical entropic values.
Minimum entropy arrangements look much different from maximum entropy
arrangements and they are not at all equally likely. Did you read in
my last post where I challenged you to do an entropy experiment? I
will post it again here, just in case you didn't get that far:
"Have a friend of yours shake a box of different colored marbles (or
colored pieces of punched out paper) while you are outside of the
room. Then, have your friend open the box and either leave it as is
or manipulate the marbles deliberately to make either apparently
"random" arrangements or more "orderly" patterns as your friend sees
fit. Then, have your friend call you back into the room when ready.
Your job will be to see if you can detect intelligent manipulation vs.
shaking. You will either say that the pattern before you could be the
result of "either shaking or manipulation" or "manipulation alone".
Do this many times and see how often you are right and wrong when you
recognize that "only manipulation" could have produced a given pattern
of marbles in the box. See if you are not right nearly 100% of the
time if you set your threshold for detecting low entropic states low
enough and if you use 1,000 or so marbles or punched out pieces of
paper, or something equivalent."
> Therefore any particular arrangement of the molecules tells you
> absolutely nothing, in itself, about an intelligent influence. To
> detect such an influence you would have to be able to make testable
> predictions about what particular arrangement will occur in the
> system. And you would have to eliminate all possible physical biases.
You say this because you do not understand that different arrangements
in a system carry with them very different entropic values. Go back
and read up on entropy again and see if what I am telling you is not
so.
> Having read further in your post I believe you have misunderstood what
> entropy is, and on what basis it could indicate an intelligent
> influence.
Where have I misunderstood? Do you have a reference that proves me
wrong? I certainly have many that prove you wrong. Look in any
college-level physics textbook and you will find that different
arrangements of molecules do indeed carry with them different entropic
values along the spectrum from low to high entropic states. All
potential arrangements are definitely not equally likely over time.
If this were true, it would be just as easy for a river to flow uphill
as downhill.
> William
puppe...@hotmail.com
> > as curing of composites through heat.
>
> Does the curing of composites start with a system already at maximum
> entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
> less than maximum entropic state?
Since your notion of "maximum entropy" is very ill defined, the
question does not make sense. In a previous post, you stated:
> Consider that entropy is a statistical measure of the likelihood that
> a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
> container
It's not. The entropy is a measure (actually the log of) the
degeneracy of the state of the system. If a system can have
N possible configurations in phase space with the same energy,
then the entropy of the system is related to log(N). (There's
a constant in there that I assign homework to you to look up.)
And in passing, this shows why entropy and order (or disorder)
are not strongly related. The degeneracy of a system is only
very weakly and very obscurely related to any concept of order.
The important thing is, that's the equilibrium condition. If
the system is at equilibrium, then that's the entropy. It's not
nearly so simple when the system is not at equilibrium. It can
be done, but it's a whack of a lot more work.
Lack of equilibrium can occur when another system interacts with
the system of interest. This can be because the other system is
at higher or lower temperature, higher or lower pressure, has
a different chemical or isotopic content, or is in a different
phase (solid, liquid, gas). In addition, a system can be out of
equilibrium when it is undergoing a chemical reaction, a change
of state, a change of isotopic content, etc.
There is absolutely nothing that says a system can't undergo such
changes. We see them every day. We see them in living and non-living
things. We see them producing less ordered systems, and more.
Because we see systems out of equilibrium on a routine basis,
there is no particular special status due to the fact that the
equilibrium of system is a local maximum of entropy. In fact,
the changes that we see every day are pretty much all due to
systems being out of equilibrium.
Socks
Grinder
Sean Pitman wrote:
> Consider that entropy is a statistical measure of the likelihood that
> a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
> container. The box that contains the marbles is divided up into
> imaginary grid of squares, each the size of one of our marbles. In
> this thought experiment, entropy is a measure of the statistical
> likelihood that one of our imaginary squares, chosen at random, will
> contain a red marble (vs. a white marble).
[paragraph split for clarity]
> The entropy of the system
> as a whole increases as each box becomes just as likely as all the
> other boxes of being occupied by a red marble. When this happens, the
> system is said to have reached, "maximum entropy".
[snip]
I don't understand this progression. This doesn't seem to match up to
my understanding of Thermodynamic Entropy, but I'm willing to be educated.
If the "entropy" for a given cell increases as the probability of it
being occupied by (say) a red marble, how do you aggregate these
probabilities to compute the system's "entropy." What's the math?
For instance, let's say tha the box is a 10x10 grid -- rows and columns
indexed from 0 to 9. Additionally, let's say there are 25 red marbles,
and 75 white. A strictly random distribution would lead to individual
probabilities of 0.25.
What is the "system entropy?" Sincerely, please show your work.
Von Smith
> tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote in message news:<40fe4aa6...@news-text.blueyonder.co.uk>...
>
> If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
> consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
> nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
> interference has taken place as well as something about that
> interference?
I do not claim to have any especially profound understanding of
thermodynamics, but I don't think it is correct that all systems head
towards "maximum entropy"; they head towards thermodynamic
equilibrium. If a system is hotter than its environment, its entropy
will *decrease" in order to get to equilibrium. IIRC, if the system
is far enough out of equilibrium, it may even show a certain amount of
spontaneous self-organization as dissipative structures appear to help
shed the excess energy (thereby reducing entropy even more).
>
> We know that at maximum entropy the gas in a container and/or the red
> and white marbles in our box will be distributed in the most likely
> statistical locations so that no one location is any more likely to be
> occupied by a molecule of gas or by a red marble than any other
> location. This is a statistically measurable number for this system
> and this number is different for different arrangements of marbles or
> molecules.
Depends on what you mean by "arrangement". If you are referring to
individual microstates accessible to a particular system, which would
describe each of the individual states and locations of all the
marbles in the bucket, then this is incorrect. If the only difference
between the marbles is color, then any arrangement of red and white
marbles is equally likely.
If "arrangement" refers to some perceived overall pattern in the
*macro*state of the marbles in the bucket, for example, the red
marbles' being all arranged in a cube in the middle of the bucket,
then we are talking about something different. No individual
microstate compatible with the marbles' being arranged to form a cube,
or any other impressive pattern, is any more likely than any
individual microstate in which we cannot perceive any pattern.
The issue is that the number of microstates consistent with all the
red marbles' being in a cube is quite small, whereas the number of
"noisy" microstates that don't mean anything to us is vastly greater.
This actually says more about how human pattern-recognition works than
it does about how thermodynamics works: the reason that patterns are
unlikely is that the human mind can perceive them in only a tiny
minority of the possible arrangements of marbles, not because red
marbles have some built-in tendency to head for pattern-defeating
"proper places" in the bucket. In reality, each "noisy" microstate is
as different from the other as it is from the one in which all the red
marbles are in a cube.
>
> For argument's sake lets say that the maximum entropy for a system is
> assigned the number 100 meaning that when the entropy scale hits the
> 100 mark the red marbles are in their most likely positions.
If I am imagining your example correctly, and the only difference
between the marbles is their color, then there is no such thing as a
"most likely position". No position for any given marble is any more
likely than any other.
> Let's
> also say that the minimum entropy for our system is assigned the
> number 1 on our scale meaning that the red marbles are in their most
> unlikely positions. We know that if our box of marbles starts off
> with an entropy of 1 that it WILL move toward an entropy of 100 as
> random/chaotic energy is added to the box (i.e., the box is vigorously
> shaken for a period of time). We also know that, although possible,
> the overall entropy of the box of marbles will never head back very
> far towards 1. Once the box has reached its maximum entropy of 100,
> it may fluctuate just a bit in the high 90s for very brief periods of
> time, but, with a box of a thousand or so marbles, it will never go
> back to 1 no matter how long the box is shaken.
That sounds like an inappropriate and basically meaningless metric of
entropy. As you point out, entropy is a property of the *system*, not
of any given "arrangement" of that system, regardless of how you
define the term. Why not use a logarithmic function of accessible
microstates like Boltzmann did? Again, the real reason that any
initial organized arangement is likely to disappear when you shake the
box is not that organized states have lower entropy than chaotic ones,
it is simply that there are many, many more noisy states available to
a system at a given level of entropy than there are ones in which the
marbles are neatly arranged.
Now, if we imposed constraints on the system so that the red marbles
would hold their pattern even after vigorous shaking(e.g., they are
epoxied together), then such a system *would* have a lower entropy
then one in which the individual red marbles were free to go wherever,
because the number of microstates available to such a system at a
given energy level is lower.
>
> Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
> arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
> is just as likely as every other arrangement. This is clearly
> incorrect. Certain arrangements are far more statistically likely
> since various possible arrangements do not all carry the same entropic
> value. Some arrangements do in fact have far greater entropic value
> (i.e., are much more statistically likely) than do other potential
> arrangements of marbles and molecules. Given this ability to assign a
> different statistical likelihood to various different arrangements of
> marbles, I can say, with a great deal of predictive value, that a
> particular arrangement is extremely unlikely to be the result of
> shaking the box. I could even predict, with a very high degree of
> accuracy, that certain arrangements of the marbles were in fact the
> result of deliberate outside manipulation by a much higher order of
> informational complexity. I can even demonstrate that this is true in
> a real life experiment over and over again.
Again, I suspect the difference here stems from some confusion about
what is meant by "arrangement". William is probably talking about
individual microstates, whereas you are talking about the intuitive
patterns that a human observer perceives or not in the system. The
problem is that the appearance or disappearance of patterns in your
marbles is purely phenomenal; it doesn't correspond meaningfully to
the actual thermodynamic processes going on, whereas William's model
does. Ironically, it is precisely *because* there is no meaningful
physical difference between a box full of patterned marbles and a box
full of jumbled ones that the pattern tends to disappear quickly when
the box is shaken: the number of possible arrangements that look
jumbled to us are vastly greater than the ones in which we can see the
pattern.
This is one place where your "density of beneficial functions in
sequence space" analogy might actually come in handy. One can think
of thermodynamic microstates available to a given system as a sort of
phase space, with the "rare beneficial sequences" corresponding to
those rare microstates that would look strongly-patterned to a human
observer. Only instead of gradually walking the landscape one square
at a time, the system is jumping all over it. No one square has any
more entropy than the other.
Von Smith
Fortuna nimis dat multis, satis nulli.
Mark Isaak
eros_tal...@hotmail.com (Eros) wrote:
>That's nice. If ID is an alternative to current thinking in biology,
>what exactly is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design? What
>predictions does the theory make, and how can they be tested? Is the
>theory of ID able to be confirmed or falsified using the scientific
>method? If so, how?
I posted answers to these questions last week. The *scientific*
theory of ID, to a first approximation, is the theory of evolution,
because anything else would be bad design. ID can be falsified by
falsifying evolution.
Sean, and other ID theorists, seem to have missed that post.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
Dan Wood
"Zachriel"
<"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv1.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote in
message news:Yp6dnRAqmIZ...@adelphia.com...
>
> "Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
> news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
> > tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote in message
> news:<40fe4aa6...@news-text.blueyonder.co.uk>...
> >
> > If we know that all systems head toward maximum entropy in such a
> > consistent way that this tendency has been classified as a law of
> > nature, couldn't one use this tendency to detect when outside
> > interference has taken place as well as something about that
> > interference?
> <snip>
>
> If the molecules of oil and water separate in a jar overnight, do we
assume
> the interference of elves? Or do we perhaps look for another explanation?
>
specific gravities. Water has a 10.000 sp.g. at sea level. This is used
as a standard for measure for specific gravity by the US Bereau of
Standards. Hydro-carbons have a lower sp.g. Consequently, when
oil and water is mixed, gravity will cause water seek the lowest level
displacing any substances with lower sp.g.. Gasoline, derived from
oil, for example has a specific gravity of 9+/- .4 at sea level and will
be forced to the top.
>
> If I leave town, and my brother-in-law watches my well-ordered apartment
> while I am away; when I come back and everything is in disorder, do I
blame
> entropy?
>
> Perhaps, we should apply our knowledge rather than our ignorance to
solving
> the riddle.
>
energy which causes your room to be disheveled. Only organized
effort (energy) will restore order to your room.
Dr. Wood
>
Howard Hershey
Sean Pitman wrote:
>
> puppe...@hotmail.com wrote in message news:<c7976c46.04072...@posting.google.com>...
>
[snip]
>
> I'm not sure how more it would take to get you to understand that
> maximum entropy has nothing to do with having "a lot" or "a little"
> entropy. Maximum is maximum regardless of the level of apparent
> "order" or "disorder" of a system.
>
> > You can have the entropy anything you want it
> > to be. And it does not make any difference if there is intelligence
> > involved or not.
>
> That is where you are wrong when it comes to getting a system to leave
> a state of maximum entropy.
>
> > If a process can happen at all, it does not violate
> > the 2nd law. It does not matter whether it happens with a living
> > critter there or not.
>
> I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
> law.
Except you keep confusing order, as perceived by humans, as if it were
the same thing as entropy.
> What I am talking about is the difference between random energy
> (i.e., heat) and ordered or directed energy. Random energy can only
> be turned into directed energy by a system that is not yet at maximum
> entropy - such as a living thing.
Let's take one single form of energy, namely shaking a box filled with
objects. Some of the objects are red; others are blue. Some of the
objects are large; others are small. Let's assume that there is no
correlation between color and size.
It does not matter one whit how the objects are arranged in the box
initially. They could be tossed in randomly, arranged carefully and
intelligently with the small objects on top, or the red ones. Whatever.
After we shake the box randomly for some time, we will observe two
things: One, the color of the objects are randomly distributed in
space. Two, the size of the objects is not. Specifically, the large
objects will form the top layer.
Of course, if there *is* a correlation between color and size (say the
large objects are red), then color will not be arranged randomly after shaking.
That is, the *same* random, undirected form of energy produced
randomness for one property of the objects (color) and order for the
other (size).
Clearly the reason why you choose color and shaking is because you
*know* that shaking does not interact with the physical property of
color. Shaking *does* interact with the size of objects.
> A living thing can enter or affect
> other systems that are at a state of maximum entropy.
The situation I described above (sorting based on size, and color if
color is correlated with size) happens on beaches all around the world
by the action of tides and waves in the total absence of intelligence
and would happen in the absence of life.
> The living
> thing is capable of doing something very interesting with random
> energy. It is able to order random disordered energy into a
> directable force. The application of random energy (which is itself at
> maximum entropy) cannot, by itself, cause a system of gas molecules
> already at maximum entropy to leave the state of maximum entropy.
A temperature *change*, specifically lowering the temperature, however
can cause a system of gas at maximum entropy at the higher temperature
to become more highly ordered, even forming crystal structures at the
lower temperature. Without violating the 2nd law, of course. Nor is a
living thing needed to cause changes in temperature in nature.
William
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
>
>> If the system is
>> only partially disturbed then the second state still contains elements
>> from the first state (entropy has not reached maximum).
>
>And how can you recognize this? Can you see a difference? Is this
>difference statistically calculable even if you didn't know what the
>initial starting point of the system was?
>In other words, can you simply walk up to a system for the first
>time, look at it, and know how far away it is from maximum
>entropy at that instant in time? Yes, you can.
OK. I'll give you a box of marbles. You tell me whether that is at low
entropy or high entropy. Tell me the tests you apply and how you
interpret them. If you want to introduce the term 'disorder' then
please define it. Just seeing patterns is not sufficient. Note that
the volume of the box is has not changed, nor has the number of
marbles in the box.
>The pattern of maximum entropy is quite different from the
>pattern of a system that has not yet reached maximum entropy.
Please tell me how you would know whether what you are looking at was
how I had arranged the marbles in the box or how they were after I had
shaken the box up.
>> There is
>> absolutely no significance in either the first arrangement of
>> molecules or the last one - other than that the last arrangement has a
>> random relationship to the first one.
>
>No significance to first and last arrangements of molecules? You've
>got to be joking. Have you ever read that a characteristic of a system
>that has not yet reached maximum entropy is the ability to obtain
>"useful work" from it?
>For example, imagine two boxes, Box A and Box B connected to each
>other by a tube. Say that all the molecules of a gas start off in Box
>A. If allowed to go to Box B,
Allowed to go to box B? What potential difference was there between
the boxes? Gravity? Air pressure? Electrical? Gas pressure? If there
was no potential difference the molecules would not move from where
they were.
>they will quickly move through the tube
>connecting Box A and Box B in such a way that they would turn a fan
>appropriately situated in the tube. However, as soon as equilibrium
>is reached between Box A and Box B, the fan will stop turning. The
>system is now at its maximum level of entropy.
The fan is turned because of a potential difference which reaches
equilibrium - energy has been expended in spreading the molecules out;
the fan (in offering resistance) gets turned in the process. Entropy
has increased because the molecules now take up the volume of the two
boxes - there are many more possible positions for them to take up.
You are now talking about something different to the marbles in a
closed box.
Getting back to the original point; how can in Intelligent Design be
detected in any of these processes?
William
Zachriel
"Dan Wood" <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:S_VLc.22263$Yw3....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
That's fine, except for being wrong. Water and alcohol have different
specific gravities, but have no problem remaining mixed. On the other hand,
oil and water separate even in micro-gravity environments. They separate
because the attraction of oil and water molecules for their own type is
greater than the attraction of oil molecules for water molecules. This can
also be explained thermodynamically, but not by Sean's particular
misunderstanding of the subject. Even if gravity did the sorting, however,
the point would be exactly the same.
Sean is claiming that a bunch of mixed up red and black marbles have greater
entropy than if they are segregated. This is incorrect. A shuffled deck of
cards has exactly the same entropy as an ordered deck of cards. The
molecular order is equivalent with any ordering of marbles or cards. If you
want to change the entropy of playing cards, light them on fire.
Sean is claiming that if "marbles separate in a jar overnight" that we
should suspect the work of intelligent designer. Of course, with marbles, we
probably would--but that's only because we know the properties of marbles,
and know that the artificial coloring of marbles does not result in natural
sorting. (Particles pushed by the solar wind, on the other hand, ARE sorted
by color. Black ones absorb more light and so are accelerated more!)
In any case, Sean then extrapolates his self-enforced ignorance of how
living molecules self-organize, and therefore posits the interference of an
intelligent designer. His analogy is imperfect and misleading. Matter often
self-organizes, both in living and non-living systems, and often in very
complex ways.
> >
> > If I leave town, and my brother-in-law watches my well-ordered apartment
> > while I am away; when I come back and everything is in disorder, do I
> blame
> > entropy?
> >
> > Perhaps, we should apply our knowledge rather than our ignorance to
> solving
> > the riddle.
> >
> There is no riddle here. You have a sloppy relative who exerts random
> energy which causes your room to be disheveled.
Well, you are probably right on this one. Knowing the properties of in-laws,
we can make a reasonable inference. Keep in mind though, that the entropy of
a disordered room is the same as the entropy of an ordered one (Except
perhaps the burned pizza in the oven!) In this case, "order" mean usefully
organized for my personal taste and habits and has nothing to do with
molecular order and disorder as referenced by thermodynamics.
This is the inverse of the first example.
> Only organized
> effort (energy) will restore order to your room.
Yes, but remember it was organized energy that caused the problem in the
first place!
--
Zachriel's Word Mutation and Evolution Experiment
And it takes less than "zillions of years"!
http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/
Zachriel
Here is a little additional information about immiscible liquids in the
low-gravity environment of SkyLab.
"The vials were then shaken to disperse the liquids and observed to see
whether separation took place. While a gravity force was not present to
separate the liquids, some separation by coalescence was possible. Small
drops of the same liquid joined as they came into contact, eventually into
significant amounts."
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-401/ch12.htm
The time it took to separate in zero-gravity was many times slower, of
course, and it has been speculated that this can be used to create composite
materials with unique properties.
Sean Pitman
> > entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
> > less than maximum entropic state?
>
> Since your notion of "maximum entropy" is very ill defined, the
> question does not make sense. In a previous post, you stated:
The notion of "maximum entropy", as I have presented it here, is not
just my notion nor is it ill defined. It is very well defined.
> > Consider that entropy is a statistical measure of the likelihood that
> > a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
> > container
>
> It's not. The entropy is a measure (actually the log of) the
> degeneracy of the state of the system. If a system can have
> N possible configurations in phase space with the same energy,
> then the entropy of the system is related to log(N). (There's
> a constant in there that I assign homework to you to look up.)
The fundamental equation is DS = kB ln [microstates(final) /
microstate(initial)] in molecular thermodynamics where kB is the
Boltzmann constant, 1.38 x 10^23 J/K .
Do you understand what this formula is saying here? The entropy of
the system is related to the number of possible configurations in
phase space. Given that the energy of a molecule is inseparably
joined to the molecule's location, entropy increases as the molecules
are able to "spread out" thereby gaining access to more "energy
levels" than before. In other words, "the molecules, despite no
greater energy, can access more quantum states of energy-location."
(1) As it turns out, molecules do not have a preference for any
particular energy state. So, they disperse themselves as evenly as
possible through the available energy states. (2) When this dispersion
is completed so that all the energy states are equally likely to be
occupied by a molecule, maximum entropy is reached.
So you see, it is just as I said initially. Entropy can be measured
by the likelihood that a given energy "state" or position will be
occupied by a molecule at any given point in time (or a red marble
used for illustrating this concept). When all positions are equally
likely to be occupied at any given point in time, then the entropy of
that closed system has reached its "maximum". And, "once this has
happened, the probability that this sharing of energy will reverse
itself (that is, that the gas will spontaneously contract [without a
loss of energy to an outside heat sink]) is so minute as to be
unthinkable." (2)
So, what about William's assertion that it is just as likely to have a
significant majority of the red marbles on one side of the box as it
is to have them in any other orientation? Well, using gas molecules
as an illustration again, even a distribution with a seemingly high
probability, such as there being "49.999% of the molecules in the left
half of the container and 50.001% in the right half", is "essentially
negligible compared to the number that would correspond to an exact
50-percent distribution." (2)
Therefore, William and several others commenting in this thread are
mistaken in thinking that the pattern of maximum entropy is the same
as that of minimum potential entropy for a system. Even a moderate
majority of the molecules or marbles being on one half of the box
after maximum entropy is reached is so miniscule that finding such a
situation would be clear evidence of a highly complex or deliberately
directed source of outside non-random energy.
1. http://www.entropysite.com/microstate/index.html
2. http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtut/thermo/entropy.html
> And in passing, this shows why entropy and order (or disorder)
> are not strongly related. The degeneracy of a system is only
> very weakly and very obscurely related to any concept of order.
I agree. "Order" seems to me to be a rather subjective term.
However, "equilibrium" or a uniform statistical likelihood of
molecular occupation is not so subjective, but can be directly
calculated and observed in a way that clearly differentiates such a
state from lesser states of equilibrium/maximum entropy.
> The important thing is, that's the equilibrium condition. If
> the system is at equilibrium, then that's the entropy.
I would say that system equilibrium = maximum entropy.
> It's not
> nearly so simple when the system is not at equilibrium. It can
> be done, but it's a whack of a lot more work.
When a system is not at equilibrium you can at least say that the
system has not yet reached its maximum level of entropy. Its entropy
is less than maximum.
> Lack of equilibrium can occur when another system interacts with
> the system of interest.
Certainly. . .
> This can be because the other system is
> at higher or lower temperature, higher or lower pressure, has
> a different chemical or isotopic content, or is in a different
> phase (solid, liquid, gas).
Yep . . .
> In addition, a system can be out of
> equilibrium when it is undergoing a chemical reaction, a change
> of state, a change of isotopic content, etc.
Also true . . .
> There is absolutely nothing that says a system can't undergo such
> changes.
Who every said that a system can't undergo changes? I never said such
a thing. What I said and what is most certainly still true is that a
system that has reached maximum entropy cannot reverse itself, by
itself, to go back to a state of "less than maximum entropy". Also,
the addition or subtraction of disordered energy (i.e., heat), to a
system already at maximum entropy will not cause that system to gain a
state of less than maximum entropy either. Random energy, or, perhaps
more properly termed, homogenous energy, cannot reduce the homogeny of
a focal system that is already maximally homogenized. Random energy
can only be directed in a non-homogenous way by a system that has not
yet reached its maximum level of entropy.
> We see them every day. We see them in living and non-living
> things. We see them producing less ordered systems, and more.
But we never see systems that are already at their maximum level of
entropy leaving that state outside of the action of another system
that has not yet reached its state of maximum entropy and which is
able to convert disordered energy into a very directed non-homogenous
force.
> Because we see systems out of equilibrium on a routine basis,
> there is no particular special status due to the fact that the
> equilibrium of system is a local maximum of entropy. In fact,
> the changes that we see every day are pretty much all due to
> systems being out of equilibrium.
That is correct. However, for those systems that are in
equilibrium/maximum entropy, they just don't leave this state by
themselves or by the simple addition or subtraction of random energy.
That is why the red marbles will not end up on the same side of the
box once they have achieved homogenous distribution (which is
statistically determined and thus clearly discernable from various
degrees of non-homogenous distribution) no matter how long the box is
shaken. That is why a non-random energy source is clearly discernable
whenever one sees that the red marbles/molecules are all on one side
of the box. Do the experiment yourself to test this hypothesis of
mine and see if it does not carry with it a very high degree of
predictive value.
> Socks
Sean Pitman
> > I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
> > law.
>
> Except you keep confusing order, as perceived by humans, as if it were
> the same thing as entropy.
I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
independently of human perceptions of "order". However, humans can
recognize when a system is not at its maximum entropic state. The
fact is that different entropic levels each have a discernibly
different look. Most people call this the ability to recognize
"order". I feel that this term is rather subjective, but entropy is
not so subjective.
> > What I am talking about is the difference between random energy
> > (i.e., heat) and ordered or directed energy. Random energy can only
> > be turned into directed energy by a system that is not yet at maximum
> > entropy - such as a living thing.
>
> Let's take one single form of energy, namely shaking a box filled with
> objects. Some of the objects are red; others are blue. Some of the
> objects are large; others are small. Let's assume that there is no
> correlation between color and size.
Ok . . .
> It does not matter one whit how the objects are arranged in the box
> initially. They could be tossed in randomly, arranged carefully and
> intelligently with the small objects on top, or the red ones. Whatever.
Good so far . . .
> After we shake the box randomly for some time, we will observe two
> things: One, the color of the objects are randomly distributed in
> space. Two, the size of the objects is not. Specifically, the large
> objects will form the top layer.
>
> Of course, if there *is* a correlation between color and size (say the
> large objects are red), then color will not be arranged randomly after shaking.
That's very true . . .
> That is, the *same* random, undirected form of energy produced
> randomness for one property of the objects (color) and order for the
> other (size).
Sure enough . . . Although you really can't call this sort of order a
reduction in entropy because this system is at its maximum level of
entropy once the objects are in fact "sorted". In fact, it was at a
less than maximum state before these objects were sorted. So, in a
sense, the sorting resulted in greater system entropy over time. You
might have thought the objects were initially homogenously placed in
the box, but the fact is that they were not in their maximum state of
energy diffusion. Their resulting movements with the addition of
random energy was not homogenous and could have been used to obtain
"useful work".
The same would be true of a "homogenous" mixture of oil and water.
The movement of the oil and water relative to each other as they
strive to achieve maximum entropy could be used to do "useful work."
The information required to achieve this separation is not, however,
contained by the random energy applied to the system, but by the
molecules or objects themselves (just like trees are capable of
transforming random energy into directed energy as part of a
thermodynamic system).
Many non-living systems do have a degree of internal order that is in
fact capable of directing random energy in non-random ways. In fact, I
have a little toy that does this very thing. I shake up the
denser-than-water solution in the toy so that it becomes "homogenized"
with the water throughout the toy. I then set the toy down and the
denser-than-water solution starts to move in a uniform way toward the
bottom of the toy through a labyrinth of ledges. As it moves through
this labyrinth due to gravitational separation combined with internal
heat energy, the solution spins a little wheel. However, once all the
solution has finished moving, the system reaches entropic equilibrium
and the wheel stops spinning. Certainly, random energy could come
along again and cause this whole system to move out of equilibrium and
do useful work again.
However, I was not talking about such a system with my use of the red
and white marble illustration. I was talking about a situation where
the "sorted property" of the system was known to not be affected
preferentially by a disordered energy source. In such a situation,
non-homogenous sorting would be an indication of a directed outside
influence or even an intelligent influence depending upon the
situation. If the system itself is known to contain less information
than what is needed for the degree or type of sorting observed, then
the conclusion can be confidently made that some sort of outside
source of additional information, beyond the application of random
energy or heat from the sun, was required to achieve the observed
effect.
> Clearly the reason why you choose color and shaking is because you
> *know* that shaking does not interact with the physical property of
> color. Shaking *does* interact with the size of objects.
That's right, given that the sizes of the objects are different.
That's my whole point. At least you understand this, while William
and a few others still seem to be struggling with this concept.
> > A living thing can enter or affect
> > other systems that are at a state of maximum entropy.
>
> The situation I described above (sorting based on size, and color if
> color is correlated with size) happens on beaches all around the world
> by the action of tides and waves in the total absence of intelligence
> and would happen in the absence of life.
Right, but I'm not talking about such a situation. In such a
situation as you are describing, intelligence would not be
distinguishable from non-intelligent processes. This is not the case
with the box of red and white marbles however.
> > The living
> > thing is capable of doing something very interesting with random
> > energy. It is able to order random disordered energy into a
> > directable force. The application of random energy (which is itself at
> > maximum entropy) cannot, by itself, cause a system of gas molecules
> > already at maximum entropy to leave the state of maximum entropy.
>
> A temperature *change*, specifically lowering the temperature, however
> can cause a system of gas at maximum entropy at the higher temperature
> to become more highly ordered, even forming crystal structures at the
> lower temperature. Without violating the 2nd law, of course. Nor is a
> living thing needed to cause changes in temperature in nature.
You do realize, of course, that lowering the temperature of a gas so
that it freezes into a crystalline form would not change the fact that
the system is still at maximum entropy given its new level of
available energy states. A stable crystalline snowflake is in fact at
maximum entropy. It is also highly chaotic by the way. It is based
on a relatively simple molecular formula interacting with a great deal
of chaos as it forms its fractal-type geometry. Interestingly enough,
despite what many people think, a snowflake actually has very little
informational complexity.
Dan Wood
separates.
>
> On the other hand,
> oil and water separate even in micro-gravity environments. They separate
> because the attraction of oil and water molecules for their own type is
> greater than the attraction of oil molecules for water molecules. This can
> also be explained thermodynamically, but not by Sean's particular
> misunderstanding of the subject. Even if gravity did the sorting, however,
> the point would be exactly the same.
>
But even this isn't the issue.
>
I'm not disputing your statement, > Sean is claiming that a bunch of mixed
> up red and black marbles have greater
> entropy than if they are segregated. This is incorrect. A shuffled deck of
> cards has exactly the same entropy as an ordered deck of cards. The
> molecular order is equivalent with any ordering of marbles or cards. If
you
> want to change the entropy of playing cards, light them on fire.
>
if the marbles were 50/50 separated by color, 500 red on one end and 500
white on the other end of a box, we can say that entropy (disorder) is
at zero. They will remain static and unchanged as long as they remain at
rest. But the 2nd. law states that _over_ time, in a closed system,
entropy (heat energy) increases towards total equalibrium.
If you shake the marbles for a _period_ of time, then the marbles will have
fallen into a more disordered state i.e. the red and white marbles will
become mixed.
If you continue to shake the box the marbles entropy increases and the
red and white marbles become more homogeneously mixed. When
the shaking ceases, and the box is at rest, entropy is maximum. Pick
the box up and begin shaking.... Raw energy (shaking the box) will
never again cause the marbles to reach zero entropy (the original ordered
state) Or the odds against the marbles becoming re-arranged in the original
ordered state, without intelligent intervention is astronomical.
>
> Sean is claiming that if "marbles separate in a jar overnight" that we
> should suspect the work of intelligent designer.
>
had become re-ordered into the origional state, I would call the police.
Then take an inventory of my posessions. It doesn't happen naturally!
>
> Of course, with marbles, we
> probably would--but that's only because we know the properties of marbles,
> and know that the artificial coloring of marbles does not result in
natural
> sorting. (Particles pushed by the solar wind, on the other hand, ARE
sorted
> by color. Black ones absorb more light and so are accelerated more!)
>
> In any case, Sean then extrapolates his self-enforced ignorance of how
> living molecules self-organize, and therefore posits the interference of
an
> intelligent designer. His analogy is imperfect and misleading. Matter
often
> self-organizes, both in living and non-living systems, and often in very
> complex ways.
>
complexity approximating that of a living organism.
Regards,
Dr. Wood
Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr.
> I would disagree, _inabinate_ matter _never_ self-organizes into a state of
> complexity approximating that of a living organism.
>
> Regards,
> Dr. Wood
[much snippage]
What about in the case of living organisims? Or do living organisms not
exist (or are you assuming your conclusion?)?
--
Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr.
SIUE Dept. of Biological Sciences
who...@siue.edu
PGP Key ID 138BCEE1
SortingItOut
Gas and marbles are not equivalent. Gases are subject to physical
laws that the purely statistical marbles are not subject to. Getting
the gas to occupy only one half of the available volume requires some
kind of work input. Getting the red and white marbles to confine
themselves to their own half of the box is statistically easy. Shake
the box enough times and you will see this arrangement a predictable
number of times.
Imagine a box with 20 positions containing 10 red marbles and 10 white
marbles. You seem to claim that having red on one side and white on
the other is a low entropy condition and "thoroughly mixed" is the
highest entropy. The problem with the marble example is that all
arrangements of the marbles are equally likely (and equally unlikely).
Shake the box many times and it will freely move between these two
arrangments (entropy states) over and over and over again.
But the entropy is an illusion, just like the apparent order is an
illusion. The fact is that all possible arragements are equal. The
illusion is enhanced by expanding the example to billions of marbles.
We sense that if we start with the colors segragated that will never
get back to that state. But the fact is that *no matter what*
arrangement you start with, getting back to that *specific*
arrangement is just as unlikely as getting back to having red and
white segregated.
I really don't see how the term "entropy" can be applied to the marble
example.
R. Baldwin
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
Sean, I believe there are a few things you are overlooking in all this.
First of all, you will have a really hard time finding a system at its
maximum entropic state. You might find a system at approximately an
equilibrium state, which is not the same thing. In real physics there are no
closed systems (except possibly the Universe, which is doubtful), so
whatever system boundary you draw will have energy exchange (including mass
exchange) with its environment. Any entropy in a system will tend to spread
out to its environment.
Second, there is no need for energy to be "directed" to achieve a lowering
of entropy in a system. A classic example from Chemistry is oxygen-> ozone
and ozone-> oxygen. Both occur naturally, without any direction. Ozone->
oxygen is exothermic and spontaneous, while oxygen-> ozone is endothermic
and non-spontaneous. Given an equal number of atoms, ozone gas has a lower
entropy than oxygen gas at the same temperature. Ozone breakdown to oxygen
occurs readily without any help, raising entropy. All that is needed for the
reverse reaction to occur, lowering the entropy again, is for a few
high-energy photons to pass through. A nearby arc of electricity (such as
lightning) will also suffice.
Since Earth's upper atmosphere is bombarded with high-energy photons all the
time, and since lightning is a common phenomenon, the endothermic,
non-spontaneous reaction occurs and the oxygen system energy is lowered. The
"homogeneity" of the energy (as you called it) is not relevant. In fact, the
photons emitted by the sun are radiated pretty much homogenously in all
directions. The Earth just happens to receive a few of them by being in the
way.
Third, entropy is a state variable. It is wholly dependent on the state of
the system. It is completely independent of the path the system followed in
getting there. Thermodynamics tells you the amount of energy exchange
between system and environment that is needed to achieve a given entropy
change. It does not care what form that energy takes. It does not tell you
whether or not the path between the two states is viable.
Finally, remember that you can draw a system boundary anywhere, and the
Second Law still holds. You still need to account for every energy exchange
between the system and its environment. The only "direction" that matters is
the net direction of energy exchange between system and environment. It does
not matter whether there was any intent behind the energy exchange.
Glenn
"Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr." <postm...@hoxnet.com> wrote in message
news:slrncg1dd2.3...@wweb.owens-ill.com...
> On 2004-07-23, Dan Wood <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > I would disagree, _inabinate_ matter _never_ self-organizes into a
state of
> > complexity approximating that of a living organism.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Dr. Wood
>
> [much snippage]
>
> What about in the case of living organisims? Or do living organisms
not
> exist (or are you assuming your conclusion?)?
>
Are you proposing that existing life at any given stage is inanimate,
or are you assuming a conclusion that inanimate matter can organize a
living organism.
H,R.Gruemm
> tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote in message news:<40fd1c9f...@news-text.blueyonder.co.uk>...
>
> > >Now, lets say that you leave the room for a while and come back to
> > >find the marbles in the box perfectly separated into two groups where
> > >in one half of the box there are only red marbles while in the other
> > >half there are only white marbles. What would you think? Would you
> > >suppose this arrangement happened without intelligent guidance by
> > >shaking the box? No, you wouldn't - But why?
> >
> > It would say absolutely nothing about intelligence - unless someone
> > had required beforehand that the marbles were to be arranged in that
> > way. It is answered precisely by the point I was making about
> > entropy. Shake up a box of coloured marbles and there are a billion
> > arrangements they could fall into. Absolutely ANY arrangement is as
> > likely as any other - including the arrangement of half red and half
> > white. The fact that they will usually look jumbled up when you open
> > the box is that, out of all the possible arrangements, far more would
> > look jumbled up than would look patterned. Any particular arrangement
> > (whether a jumbled one or not) becomes significant only if it is
> > predicted. That is all there is to it.
>
> a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
> imaginary grid of squares, each the size of one of our marbles. In
> this thought experiment, entropy is a measure of the statistical
> likelihood that one of our imaginary squares, chosen at random, will
> as a whole increases as each box becomes just as likely as all the
> other boxes of being occupied by a red marble. When this happens, the
> system is said to have reached, "maximum entropy".
>
> by an outside source of *directed* energy. Simply applying more
I've noticed several misunderstandings in your post:
1) Incoming solar photons with a frequency distribution which peeks
around 450 nm (IIRC) *are* directed energy (using your terminology).
(In this context, illuminating your marbles with the light of a red
dwarf star *will* result in a preponderance of red marbles on one
side. No source of "higher informational complexity" is needed).
2) Adding heat from below to a homogenous layer of liquid causes
Benard convection (and all the other stuff that Zachriel has
described).
3) Entropy is about microscopic disorder, not macroscopic disorder.
The entropy difference (or free energy difference) between two
different DNA sequences with identical contents of G, G, T and A is
negligible compared to the entropy (or free energy) of the sequences
themselves.
Regards, HRG.
Zachriel
I agree. Even if gravity did the sorting, however, the point would be
exactly the same.
> >
> I'm not disputing your statement, > Sean is claiming that a bunch of mixed
> > up red and black marbles have greater
> > entropy than if they are segregated. This is incorrect. A shuffled deck
of
> > cards has exactly the same entropy as an ordered deck of cards. The
> > molecular order is equivalent with any ordering of marbles or cards. If
> you
> > want to change the entropy of playing cards, light them on fire.
> >
> I disagree, if _one_ definition of entropy is a measure of disorder,
*Molecular* order and disorder. It has nothing to do with our preference for
segregating colored marbles.
Consider every possible arrangement of every possible molecule in a box of
marbles. Every molecule in each marble has an analog in a molecule in a
different marble. Exchanging two marbles does not represent a different and
unique molecular arrangement. The entropy is the same. If you were to crush
the marbles and break the molecular bonds, then this would represent a
change of entropy.
Once you become convinced of this, I would expect you would reject Sean's
fallacious argument in this regard. Here is an article from the Journal of
Chemical Education:
"The dealer shuffling cards in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, the professor who
mixes the papers and books on a desk, the student who tosses clothing about
his or her room, the fuel for the huge cranes and trucks that would be
necessary to move the non bonded stones of the Great Pyramid of Cheops all
across Egypt — each undergoes physical, thermodynamic entropy increase in
these specific processes. The thermodynamic entropy change from
human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves, in
the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions of
cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: Zero."
http://www.entropysite.com/shuffled_cards.html
Zero.
> and
> if the marbles were 50/50 separated by color, 500 red on one end and 500
> white on the other end of a box, we can say that entropy (disorder) is
> at zero. They will remain static and unchanged as long as they remain at
> rest. But the 2nd. law states that _over_ time, in a closed system,
> entropy (heat energy) increases towards total equalibrium.
The marbles have exactly the same entropy whether sorted or not. The amount
of thermodynamic work available is the same.
> If you shake the marbles for a _period_ of time, then the marbles will
have
> fallen into a more disordered state i.e. the red and white marbles will
> become mixed.
> If you continue to shake the box the marbles entropy increases and the
> red and white marbles become more homogeneously mixed. When
> the shaking ceases, and the box is at rest, entropy is maximum. Pick
> the box up and begin shaking.... Raw energy (shaking the box) will
> never again cause the marbles to reach zero entropy (the original ordered
> state) Or the odds against the marbles becoming re-arranged in the
original
> ordered state, without intelligent intervention is astronomical.
> >
> > Sean is claiming that if "marbles separate in a jar overnight" that we
> > should suspect the work of intelligent designer.
> >
> If in the case of my marbles, if I woke up and found that my marbles
> had become re-ordered into the origional state, I would call the police.
> Then take an inventory of my posessions. It doesn't happen naturally!
I would agree that it would be very unlikely for marbles to segregate
naturally. This is because we know the properties of marbles, and know that
the color has no effect on natural sorting. However, as you alluded to
before, if they were different weights and if you shook the box when you
opened it, they might sort to some degree. So undirected energy has the
ability to sort some objects by weight. We know this, so we wouldn't be
surprised if it happened.
> >
> > Of course, with marbles, we
> > probably would--but that's only because we know the properties of
marbles,
> > and know that the artificial coloring of marbles does not result in
> natural
> > sorting. (Particles pushed by the solar wind, on the other hand, ARE
> sorted
> > by color. Black ones absorb more light and so are accelerated more!)
> >
> > In any case, Sean then extrapolates his self-enforced ignorance of how
> > living molecules self-organize, and therefore posits the interference of
> an
> > intelligent designer. His analogy is imperfect and misleading. Matter
> often
> > self-organizes, both in living and non-living systems, and often in very
> > complex ways.
> >
> I would disagree, _inabinate_ matter _never_ self-organizes into a state
of
> complexity approximating that of a living organism.
<snip>
Ah, you've added an extra clause. We were talking marbles. Ok, then.
We know that matter can self-organize, such as weather, planetary systems,
the Earth's water-cycle, etc. As far as organizing itself into the vast
complexity of a living organism, we see this everyday as living things made
of matter take inanimate matter and organize it; plants, children growing,
digesting food, etc. This process obviously does not violate the 2nd Law and
evolution is no different in this regard. The only thing left to argue is
abiogenesis.
---
National Academy of Sciences
"The theory of evolution has become the central unifying concept of biology
and is a critical component of many related scientific disciplines. In
contrast, the claims of creation science lack empirical support and cannot
be meaningfully tested."
http://www.nap.edu/html/creationism/
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
news:<c7976c46.04072...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > > Does the curing of composites start with a system already at maximum
> > > entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
> > > less than maximum entropic state?
> >
> > Since your notion of "maximum entropy" is very ill defined, the
> > question does not make sense. In a previous post, you stated:
>
> The notion of "maximum entropy", as I have presented it here, is not
> just my notion nor is it ill defined. It is very well defined.
It certainly is, and it doesn't apply to how colored marbles are sorted.
Journal of Chemical Education
"The dealer shuffling cards in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, the professor who
mixes the papers and books on a desk, the student who tosses clothing about
his or her room, the fuel for the huge cranes and trucks that would be
necessary to move the non bonded stones of the Great Pyramid of Cheops all
across Egypt — each undergoes physical, thermodynamic entropy increase in
these specific processes. The thermodynamic entropy change from
human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves, in
the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions of
cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: Zero."
http://www.entropysite.com/shuffled_cards.html
Please withdraw your erroneous argument.
Zachriel
"Zachriel" <"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@staff.texas.net> wrote
in message news:JKudnTOZnJn...@adelphia.com...
>
<snip>
>
> "The dealer shuffling cards in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, the professor who
> mixes the papers and books on a desk, the student who tosses clothing
about
> his or her room, the fuel for the huge cranes and trucks that would be
> necessary to move the non bonded stones of the Great Pyramid of Cheops all
> across Egypt — each undergoes physical, thermodynamic entropy increase in
> these specific processes. The thermodynamic entropy change from
> human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves,
in
> the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions
of
> cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: Zero."
> http://www.entropysite.com/shuffled_cards.html
>
> Zero.
>
>
An easy way to understand this is to determine how much thermodynamic work
is available. Burn a sorted deck of cards, and burn an unsorted deck of
cards. You will find they make just as much heat, and your heat engine will
turn just as many times. The arrangement of the cards is not important to
their thermodynamic properties, which is the complex arrangement of the
atoms that make up the paper of the cards. When we burn them, this ordered
state is destroyed and energy is released.
Cards are often used as an illustration of molecular sorting, but don't
confuse the analogy with the actuality.
Howard Hershey
Sean Pitman wrote:
>
> Howard Hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote in message news:<41007515...@indiana.edu>...
>
> > > I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
> > > law.
> >
> > Except you keep confusing order, as perceived by humans, as if it were
> > the same thing as entropy.
>
> I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
> independently of human perceptions of "order".
Yes. And you fail to do so.
> However, humans can
> recognize when a system is not at its maximum entropic state.
IOW, you are substituting your intuition about the *results* for an
actual calculation based on principles. In the case of the shaken box
and red and white marbles, you specifically do not take into
consideration the energy used to randomize the marbles and whether or
not this causes a greater or lesser gain of entropy than would occur if
a human were to reach in and intelligently move the marbles (red to one
side; white to the other). That energy is part of the system. Merely
looking at the marbles in the box at the end does not tell you anything
about the change in entropy that occurred in the process that produced
that effect.
> The
> fact is that different entropic levels each have a discernibly
> different look. Most people call this the ability to recognize
> "order". I feel that this term is rather subjective, but entropy is
> not so subjective.
Which is why you prefer to use the intuitive human sense of order rather
than actually calculate entropy changes.
I did not claim that there was a reduction in entropy. There was, as is
the case whenever energy is expended in a process, an increase in
entropy of the entire system. The entropy of the system *increased* I
am pointing out that the same input of energy produced what is perceived
as 'order' for one property and what is perceived as 'disorder' for
another. The difference is because the energy input interacted
consistently with one property and not with the other. This disputes
your claim that random energy input cannot produce your intuitive feel
for *order*. It can.
> In fact, it was at a
> less than maximum state before these objects were sorted. So, in a
> sense, the sorting resulted in greater system entropy over time. You
> might have thought the objects were initially homogenously placed in
> the box, but the fact is that they were not in their maximum state of
> energy diffusion. Their resulting movements with the addition of
> random energy was not homogenous and could have been used to obtain
> "useful work".
Of course. But I said it didn't matter what the order was initially.
If the original order had been with the larger objects already on top
the energy input would not have resulted in a change in that perceived
order of large and small objects (although the large objects would have
all changed positions relative to one another). But the entropy of the
entire system would have increased because entropy always increases when
energy is expended. But your claim is about *order*, as perceived
intuitively by you. Your claim was that random energy cannot increase
perceived order, which you confound with entropy.
> The same would be true of a "homogenous" mixture of oil and water.
> The movement of the oil and water relative to each other as they
> strive to achieve maximum entropy could be used to do "useful work."
> The information required to achieve this separation is not, however,
> contained by the random energy applied to the system, but by the
> molecules or objects themselves (just like trees are capable of
> transforming random energy into directed energy as part of a
> thermodynamic system).
>
> Many non-living systems do have a degree of internal order that is in
> fact capable of directing random energy in non-random ways.
So do all *living* systems! If they couldn't, they wouldn't be living.
In fact, they they use the degree of 'internal order' (inherent
properties) in molecules to do so.
> In fact, I
> have a little toy that does this very thing. I shake up the
> denser-than-water solution in the toy so that it becomes "homogenized"
> with the water throughout the toy. I then set the toy down and the
> denser-than-water solution starts to move in a uniform way toward the
> bottom of the toy through a labyrinth of ledges. As it moves through
> this labyrinth due to gravitational separation combined with internal
> heat energy, the solution spins a little wheel. However, once all the
> solution has finished moving, the system reaches entropic equilibrium
> and the wheel stops spinning. Certainly, random energy could come
> along again and cause this whole system to move out of equilibrium and
> do useful work again.
And once a living system stops receiving random energy, which they
exploit, they also stop moving. Some people call this state death. You
may have heard of it. Reproduction, however, allows the living system
to transmit the ability to exploit random energy to future generations.
You may have heard of reproduction at some point in your medical studies.
> However, I was not talking about such a system with my use of the red
> and white marble illustration.
I agree. Your illustration was carefully chosen so that the random
energy would not produce what humans perceive as 'order'. My point is
that there are other systems (both animate and inanimate) that do
exploit random energy to produce what you would perceive as 'order'.
Entropy will increase regardless of whether or not the energy produces
what you perceive as 'order'.
> I was talking about a situation where
> the "sorted property" of the system was known to not be affected
> preferentially by a disordered energy source. In such a situation,
> non-homogenous sorting would be an indication of a directed outside
> influence or even an intelligent influence depending upon the
> situation. If the system itself is known to contain less information
> than what is needed for the degree or type of sorting observed, then
> the conclusion can be confidently made that some sort of outside
> source of additional information, beyond the application of random
> energy or heat from the sun, was required to achieve the observed
> effect.
Only, of course, if the system you are describing is not one of the
"Many non-living [and I would add living] systems do have a degree of
internal order that is in fact capable of directing random energy in
non-random ways." So is it your claim that I am wrong about living
systems being able to direct random energy in non-random ways?
> > Clearly the reason why you choose color and shaking is because you
> > *know* that shaking does not interact with the physical property of
> > color. Shaking *does* interact with the size of objects.
>
> That's right, given that the sizes of the objects are different.
> That's my whole point. At least you understand this, while William
> and a few others still seem to be struggling with this concept.
I am always glad when I actually understand something about physics and
chemistry. What I don't understand is why you conflate *perceived
order* and entropy?
> > > A living thing can enter or affect
> > > other systems that are at a state of maximum entropy.
> >
> > The situation I described above (sorting based on size, and color if
> > color is correlated with size) happens on beaches all around the world
> > by the action of tides and waves in the total absence of intelligence
> > and would happen in the absence of life.
>
> Right, but I'm not talking about such a situation. In such a
> situation as you are describing, intelligence would not be
> distinguishable from non-intelligent processes. This is not the case
> with the box of red and white marbles however.
So how is that box of red and white marbles more like a living thing
interacting with its environment than is the different sizes of objects?
> > > The living
> > > thing is capable of doing something very interesting with random
> > > energy. It is able to order random disordered energy into a
> > > directable force. The application of random energy (which is itself at
> > > maximum entropy) cannot, by itself, cause a system of gas molecules
> > > already at maximum entropy to leave the state of maximum entropy.
> >
> > A temperature *change*, specifically lowering the temperature, however
> > can cause a system of gas at maximum entropy at the higher temperature
> > to become more highly ordered, even forming crystal structures at the
> > lower temperature. Without violating the 2nd law, of course. Nor is a
> > living thing needed to cause changes in temperature in nature.
>
> You do realize, of course, that lowering the temperature of a gas so
> that it freezes into a crystalline form would not change the fact that
> the system is still at maximum entropy given its new level of
> available energy states. A stable crystalline snowflake is in fact at
> maximum entropy. It is also highly chaotic by the way. It is based
> on a relatively simple molecular formula interacting with a great deal
> of chaos as it forms its fractal-type geometry.
Interestingly enough, many of the complex features of life (e.g.,
morphology) also seem to be based on relatively simple formulas and principles.
> Interestingly enough,
> despite what many people think, a snowflake actually has very little
> informational complexity.
There is only a roughly 30-fold difference (erring on the large side) in
the number of genes between E. coli (1500) and a human (approx. 45000).
Many, of course, are shared functions. So I agree that people
overestimate the informational complexity of things.
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman
> > The notion of "maximum entropy", as I have presented it here, is not
> > just my notion nor is it ill defined. It is very well defined.
>
> It certainly is, and it doesn't apply to how colored marbles are sorted.
>
> Journal of Chemical Education
> "The dealer shuffling cards in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, the professor who
> mixes the papers and books on a desk, the student who tosses clothing about
> his or her room, the fuel for the huge cranes and trucks that would be
> necessary to move the non bonded stones of the Great Pyramid of Cheops all
> across Egypt ? each undergoes physical, thermodynamic entropy increase in
> these specific processes. The thermodynamic entropy change from
> human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves, in
> the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions of
> cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: Zero."
> http://www.entropysite.com/shuffled_cards.html
As you probably know, I've used this very same reference myself in
this forum. As far as thermodynamic entropy is concerned, you, and
the author of this reference, are technically correct. All the
possible arrangements of colored marbles have the same thermodynamic
entropy. However, the colored marbles behave in very much the same way
as molecules of gas in a chamber that has random energy applied to it.
That is why I used marbles as an illustration of thermodynamic
entropy since marbles are easier to visualize and do experiments with.
Consider that a box containing a certain number of molecules of gas
and a certain level of random energy has a certain number of available
energy states that can be occupied by the molecules. Each of these
energy "states" or energy "positions" has exactly the same likelihood
of being occupied as any other state, just like any position in our
box has the same likelihood of being occupied by a red marble as any
other position. The random energy acts upon the molecules to disperse
them randomly throughout the box until they reach homogeny - a point
at which all energy states are equally likely to contain a molecules
at any given point in time. The same thing happens with the red
marbles. They disperse through the "solution" of white marbles in a
random way until they reach homogeny. At this point, every possible
position in the box is equally likely to be occupied by a red marble
as any other possible position.
This is a statistically determined likelihood for both the box of gas
molecules and the box of marbles. But the gas molecules are all the
same - right? There is not difference in "color" as there are with
the red and white marbles. This can be easily solved by giving half
of the molecules a different isotope for one of their atoms, or even
by using different colors of gas molecules that do not chemically
combine or interact. Now, you have your two different "colors" of gas
molecules. How do you think they will behave differently from our
different colored marbles?
Imagine one type of gas molecule starting off in one half of a
container and the other type of gas molecule starting off in the other
half, separated by a wall. Now, remove this wall so that more energy
states become available to both types of molecules. What will happen?
They will mix in a very homogenous way under the influence of random
energy. Now, even though all potential states or locations are
equally likely for all the molecules in this container, how long do
you think it will take for the molecules to become significantly less
homogenous than a 50:50 mixture?
Homogeny is a statistically determinable pattern. Non-homogeny can by
statistically described. Homogeny and non-homogeny are not simply
"human-defined order and disorder". Not at all. They are
statistically different entities that can be mathematically described.
Under the influence of random energy how likely is a non-homogenous
pattern in either the container of gas or the container of red and
white marbles? Relative to all the available homogenous patterns,
statistically non-homogenous patterns are extremely rare and get
exponentially more and more rare as the degree of non-homogeny
increases. That is why it is virtually impossible to get a
non-homogenous arrangement of gas molecules or red marbles once
homogeny has been reached under the influence of random energy. The
only way left to create non-homogeny is by applying directed
non-random energy to such systems.
> Please withdraw your erroneous argument.
Would you like to reconsider?
Mark Isaak
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>Howard Hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote in message news:<41007515...@indiana.edu>...
>
>> > I'm not talking about violating the 2nd law. Nothing violates the 2nd
>> > law.
>>
>> Except you keep confusing order, as perceived by humans, as if it were
>> the same thing as entropy.
>
>I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
>independently of human perceptions of "order".
Please explain how to get more useful energy out of the box of sorted
marbles than you can get from the box of mixed marbles. Until you can
demonstrate the difference in useful energy, you are not talking about
entropy.
Howard Hershey
That rather depends more upon the number of molecules in the container
than upon anything else, doesn't it? Even if, as in your argument, the
outside source of energy is unable to distinguish or affect color
differentially. If there are only two molecules in the container, the
probability that one side will contain 100% of the molecules is rather
high. If there is only one molecule, the probability that one side will
contain it is higher still.
> Therefore, William and several others commenting in this thread are
> mistaken in thinking that the pattern of maximum entropy is the same
> as that of minimum potential entropy for a system. Even a moderate
> majority of the molecules or marbles being on one half of the box
> after maximum entropy is reached is so miniscule that finding such a
> situation would be clear evidence of a highly complex or deliberately
> directed source of outside non-random energy.
The distribution is not homogenous. It is, at any given time, a point
on a stochastic bell-shaped distribution. That is, it is a random
distribution, not a homogenous one. To make the distribution
non-homogenous, one must introduce a factor that differentially affects
the molecules. For example, make one side hot and the other side cold
enough to liquify or solidify the gas.
>
> 1. http://www.entropysite.com/microstate/index.html
> 2. http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtut/thermo/entropy.html
>
> > And in passing, this shows why entropy and order (or disorder)
> > are not strongly related. The degeneracy of a system is only
> > very weakly and very obscurely related to any concept of order.
>
> I agree. "Order" seems to me to be a rather subjective term.
> However, "equilibrium" or a uniform statistical likelihood of
> molecular occupation is not so subjective, but can be directly
> calculated and observed in a way that clearly differentiates such a
> state from lesser states of equilibrium/maximum entropy.
All that gives is, under the assumptions one is making (namely a
container in which the molecules are expected to be randomly distributed
because the energy flux is at equilibrium), the probability of a
particular spot on the bell-shaped curve for the distribution of
molecules. That probability has nothing to do with the entropy of that spot.
>
> > The important thing is, that's the equilibrium condition. If
> > the system is at equilibrium, then that's the entropy.
>
> I would say that system equilibrium = maximum entropy.
>
> > It's not
> > nearly so simple when the system is not at equilibrium. It can
> > be done, but it's a whack of a lot more work.
>
> When a system is not at equilibrium you can at least say that the
> system has not yet reached its maximum level of entropy. Its entropy
> is less than maximum.
>
> > Lack of equilibrium can occur when another system interacts with
> > the system of interest.
>
> Certainly. . .
Such as life interacting with its environment.
> > This can be because the other system is
> > at higher or lower temperature, higher or lower pressure, has
> > a different chemical or isotopic content, or is in a different
> > phase (solid, liquid, gas).
>
> Yep . . .
IOW, you are claiming a universal from a special case.
> > In addition, a system can be out of
> > equilibrium when it is undergoing a chemical reaction, a change
> > of state, a change of isotopic content, etc.
>
> Also true . . .
>
> > There is absolutely nothing that says a system can't undergo such
> > changes.
>
> Who every said that a system can't undergo changes? I never said such
> a thing. What I said and what is most certainly still true is that a
> system that has reached maximum entropy cannot reverse itself, by
> itself, to go back to a state of "less than maximum entropy". Also,
> the addition or subtraction of disordered energy (i.e., heat), to a
> system already at maximum entropy will not cause that system to gain a
> state of less than maximum entropy either. Random energy, or, perhaps
> more properly termed, homogenous energy, cannot reduce the homogeny of
> a focal system that is already maximally homogenized. Random energy
> can only be directed in a non-homogenous way by a system that has not
> yet reached its maximum level of entropy.
>
> > We see them every day. We see them in living and non-living
> > things. We see them producing less ordered systems, and more.
>
> But we never see systems that are already at their maximum level of
> entropy leaving that state outside of the action of another system
> that has not yet reached its state of maximum entropy and which is
> able to convert disordered energy into a very directed non-homogenous
> force.
Tell me again what *maximum* entropy means in practical terms when you
know that any change in a system *has* to increase the entropy of the
system plus disturber of equilibrium?
> > Because we see systems out of equilibrium on a routine basis,
> > there is no particular special status due to the fact that the
> > equilibrium of system is a local maximum of entropy. In fact,
> > the changes that we see every day are pretty much all due to
> > systems being out of equilibrium.
>
> That is correct. However, for those systems that are in
> equilibrium/maximum entropy, they just don't leave this state by
> themselves or by the simple addition or subtraction of random energy.
> That is why the red marbles will not end up on the same side of the
> box once they have achieved homogenous distribution (which is
> statistically determined and thus clearly discernable from various
> degrees of non-homogenous distribution) no matter how long the box is
> shaken.
There is a difference between homogneous and random distributions. Both
can be disturbed. Neither has much to do with entropy. The gas
molecules in your container are randomly distributed. The sodium ions
in salt crystals are approximately homogenously distributed. Yet the
salt crystal is highly ordered.
> That is why a non-random energy source is clearly discernable
> whenever one sees that the red marbles/molecules are all on one side
> of the box. Do the experiment yourself to test this hypothesis of
> mine and see if it does not carry with it a very high degree of
> predictive value.
Again, this is a special case where the non-random energy sources chosen
cannot discriminate or differentially affect the color property. Yet
you are trying to act as if this were a universal case.
>
> > Socks
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
Tracy Hamilton
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
news:<c7976c46.04072...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > > Does the curing of composites start with a system already at maximum
> > > entropy and then, with the addition of heat, make this system obtain a
> > > less than maximum entropic state?
> >
> > Since your notion of "maximum entropy" is very ill defined, the
> > question does not make sense. In a previous post, you stated:
>
> The notion of "maximum entropy", as I have presented it here, is not
> just my notion nor is it ill defined. It is very well defined.
It is like somebody describing apples as being orange, with a thick
rind, and from tropical apple trees. When told that his notion of
apples was all wrong, to reply that the notion of apples is not just
his and is well defined.
> > > Consider that entropy is a statistical measure of the likelihood that
> > > a marble of a particular color will occupy a given position within a
> > > container
> >
> > It's not. The entropy is a measure (actually the log of) the
> > degeneracy of the state of the system. If a system can have
> > N possible configurations in phase space with the same energy,
> > then the entropy of the system is related to log(N). (There's
> > a constant in there that I assign homework to you to look up.)
>
> The fundamental equation is DS = kB ln [microstates(final) /
> microstate(initial)] in molecular thermodynamics where kB is the
> Boltzmann constant, 1.38 x 10^23 J/K .
>
> Do you understand what this formula is saying here? The entropy of
> the system is related to the number of possible configurations in
> phase space. Given that the energy of a molecule is inseparably
> joined to the molecule's location,
ie a phase space
> entropy increases as the molecules
> are able to "spread out" thereby gaining access to more "energy
> levels" than before. In other words, "the molecules, despite no
> greater energy, can access more quantum states of energy-location."
> (1) As it turns out, molecules do not have a preference for any
> particular energy state. So, they disperse themselves as evenly as
> possible through the available energy states.
<Jon Stewart>
WHUH?
</Jon Stewart>
So if I have two energy states, one higher than another by 100 arbitrary
units,
I expect a 50/50 distribution?
And what does it mean that molecules have no preference for an energy
state, if they can only have one of two, but not ANY other? Is that like
having
no color preferences, but always picking black or white?
Perhaps you are not clear on the meaning of a microstate - which is the
description of the energy of *every* molecule at a particular time. There
is no preference for one microstate over any other WITH THE SAME
TOTAL ENERGY. Let us say we have 900 units to distribute among
10 molecules in the two level system. There is no preference for
molecule 1 being zero, vs molecule 2 having zero energy, etc. W=10.
(0,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100) is one microstate.
(100,0,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100) is another.
> (2) When this dispersion
> is completed so that all the energy states are equally likely to be
> occupied by a molecule, maximum entropy is reached.
>
> So you see, it is just as I said initially. Entropy can be measured
> by the likelihood that a given energy "state" or position will be
> occupied by a molecule at any given point in time (or a red marble
> used for illustrating this concept). When all positions are equally
> likely to be occupied at any given point in time, then the entropy of
> that closed system has reached its "maximum". And, "once this has
> happened, the probability that this sharing of energy will reverse
> itself (that is, that the gas will spontaneously contract [without a
> loss of energy to an outside heat sink]) is so minute as to be
> unthinkable." (2)
Isn't the [ SURROUNDINGS ] the whole point?
Take one glass of water and put under a bell jar. It will be at room
temperature for as long as you wish to run the experiment. Based on
YOUR description of maximum entropy what will happen?
{YOUR PREDICTION AND EXPLANATION HERE}
[snip]
Tracy P. Hamilton
Sean Pitman
> > I was talking about a situation where
> > the "sorted property" of the system was known to not be affected
> > preferentially by a disordered energy source. In such a situation,
> > non-homogenous sorting would be an indication of a directed outside
> > influence or even an intelligent influence depending upon the
> > situation. If the system itself is known to contain less information
> > than what is needed for the degree or type of sorting observed, then
> > the conclusion can be confidently made that some sort of outside
> > source of additional information, beyond the application of random
> > energy or heat from the sun, was required to achieve the observed
> > effect.
>
> Only, of course, if the system you are describing is not one of the
> "Many non-living [and I would add living] systems do have a degree of
> internal order that is in fact capable of directing random energy in
> non-random ways."
Right - but not beyond the point of the informational complexity or
order that they already have available. Oil and water have just
enough information to "know" how to separate themselves when a certain
level (not too much or too little) random energy is applied, but they
do not know how to grow legs and walk out of the bowl even though
there is in fact enough energy available to do this. Their internal
information for directing random energy has a very limited capability.
It is at a very low level of informational complexity (i.e., it
requires relatively little information to achieve the effect).
Relatively speaking, it would require far more information and system
complexity to force the red and white marbles into a significantly
non-homogenous state.
> So is it your claim that I am wrong about living
> systems being able to direct random energy in non-random ways?
This is not my claim and it never was. I've always said that living
systems have the ability to direct random energy in non-random ways.
I'm not sure why you would have gotten any other impression.
> > However, humans can
> > recognize when a system is not at its maximum entropic state.
>
> IOW, you are substituting your intuition about the *results* for an
> actual calculation based on principles.
Not at all. Humans have an ability to recognize when red and white
marbles are in a non-homogenous state vs. a homogenous state in the
same way that we can also recognize when red and translucent gas
molecules are in a non-homogenous state vs. a homogenous state. This
ability is not a mere "intuition". It is also a calculable property
that is statistically demonstrable. Homogeny is not just some vague
human value judgement. It is a real mathematical property that is
unique from non-homogenous arrangements of either gas molecules or red
and white marbles. More non-homogenous arrangements are statistically
different, visibly different, from more homogenous arrangements. The
have different mathematically properties.
The reason why non-homogenous gases *always* mix together until they
become homogenous at a certain temperature is because there are so
many more homogenous ways to be compared to the non-homogenous
possibilities. This is both visually as well as statistically
demonstrable. The same is true for a bunch of red and white marbles.
This is not intuition. It is a mathematical fact which humans just
happen to recognize when they see it.
You can do the same thing with a mixture of oil and water. Add enough
random energy to a bottle of oil and water and these molecules can be
made to mix in a homogenous manner. As long as this level of random
energy is maintained by this system, the oil and water molecules will
remain homogeneously mixed. However, allow some of the random energy
to leave this system and the oil and water will separate, leaving
their previously homogenous state. The same thing can be demonstrated
with a mixture of two different molecules that are naturally in a
gaseous state at room temperature. Remove enough random energy/heat
from this system and the gas molecules will no longer remain in their
homogenous state, but will in fact layer out. The same thing can be
done with small and large marbles. Add enough random energy to a
system of small and large marbles (i.e., shake a box of them very
vigorously) and, as long as this energy remains at the same level, the
small and large marbles will remain in a homogenous state. However,
allow some, but not all, of this random energy to leave the system of
marbles and they will loose their homogenous state and sort themselves
out into small and large marbles.
So you see, it is random energy that always tends to move the objects
that it comes in contact with toward statistical homogeny. It is only
in the ability of the objects to consistently direct random energy
that homogeny is ever avoided for put off for a longer period of time.
The better the object are at directing random energy, the longer
ultimate homogeny or "heat death" can be put off.
> In the case of the shaken box
> and red and white marbles, you specifically do not take into
> consideration the energy used to randomize the marbles and whether or
> not this causes a greater or lesser gain of entropy than would occur if
> a human were to reach in and intelligently move the marbles (red to one
> side; white to the other). That energy is part of the system. Merely
> looking at the marbles in the box at the end does not tell you anything
> about the change in entropy that occurred in the process that produced
> that effect.
Actually, the simple act of looking at the marbles does in fact tell
you whether or not they were affected by random or non-random directed
forms of energy as well as something about the level of informational
complexity of the energy source. Just by looking at the marbles you
can get a very good idea about their statistical level of homogeny,
just like you can by looking at a glass container of red and clear
molecules in a gaseous state. There really is no fundamental
difference. When the red and clear molecules are homogeneously mixed,
they are, by definition, at their maximum state of entropy for that
energy state. You can clearly recognize this by comparing a
non-homogenous mixture with a homogenous mixture of red and clear
molecules at a given random energy state. You can actually see as
well as calculate the difference between the two states.
Interestingly enough, you can do exactly this same thing with red and
white marbles.
Thanks again for your most interesting comments. This is all I have
time for today.
Sean Pitman
> >I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
> >independently of human perceptions of "order".
>
> Please explain how to get more useful energy out of the box of sorted
> marbles than you can get from the box of mixed marbles. Until you can
> demonstrate the difference in useful energy, you are not talking about
> entropy.
Consider how you would get "useful energy" out of a system composed of
two populations of non-homogenous gas molecules that are only
different from each other by being enatomers of each other. And yet,
if allowed to mix at a certain level of random energy/heat, they will
do so until they reach their maximum state of homogeny, which is also
their maximum state of entropy for that level of system energy. They
will not go the other direction, but will proceed steadily toward a
state of statistical homogeny.
You see, I am talking about statistical homogeny of certain types of
systems, which is actually quite fundamental to the concept of maximum
vs. less-than-maximum entropy.
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
As an only illustration, sure. We must always keep in mind that analogies
are always imperfect.
> Consider that a box containing a certain number of molecules of gas
> and a certain level of random energy has a certain number of available
> energy states that can be occupied by the molecules. Each of these
> energy "states" or energy "positions" has exactly the same likelihood
> of being occupied as any other state, just like any position in our
> box has the same likelihood of being occupied by a red marble as any
> other position. The random energy acts upon the molecules to disperse
> them randomly throughout the box until they reach homogeny - a point
> at which all energy states are equally likely to contain a molecules
> at any given point in time. The same thing happens with the red
> marbles. They disperse through the "solution" of white marbles in a
> random way until they reach homogeny. At this point, every possible
> position in the box is equally likely to be occupied by a red marble
> as any other possible position.
>
> This is a statistically determined likelihood for both the box of gas
> molecules and the box of marbles. But the gas molecules are all the
> same - right?
Not necessarily. Only if they are the exact same molecule at the exact same
temperature.
> There is not difference in "color" as there are with
> the red and white marbles. This can be easily solved by giving half
> of the molecules a different isotope for one of their atoms, or even
> by using different colors of gas molecules that do not chemically
> combine or interact. Now, you have your two different "colors" of gas
> molecules. How do you think they will behave differently from our
> different colored marbles?
Well you are trying to compare trillions of elastic molecules with hundreds
of inelastic marbles. You are heading for trouble. Let's wait and see.
> Imagine one type of gas molecule starting off in one half of a
> container and the other type of gas molecule starting off in the other
> half, separated by a wall. Now, remove this wall so that more energy
> states become available to both types of molecules. What will happen?
> They will mix in a very homogenous way under the influence of random
> energy. Now, even though all potential states or locations are
> equally likely for all the molecules in this container, how long do
> you think it will take for the molecules to become significantly less
> homogenous than a 50:50 mixture?
>
> Homogeny is a statistically determinable pattern. Non-homogeny can by
> statistically described. Homogeny and non-homogeny are not simply
> "human-defined order and disorder". Not at all. They are
> statistically different entities that can be mathematically described.
> Under the influence of random energy how likely is a non-homogenous
> pattern in either the container of gas or the container of red and
> white marbles? Relative to all the available homogenous patterns,
> statistically non-homogenous patterns are extremely rare and get
> exponentially more and more rare as the degree of non-homogeny
> increases. That is why it is virtually impossible to get a
> non-homogenous arrangement of gas molecules or red marbles once
> homogeny has been reached under the influence of random energy. \
>
> The
> only way left to create non-homogeny is by applying directed
> non-random energy to such systems.
Now this is a huge leap and shows why your analogy is so misleading. There
is no sorting of marbles by color because you have carefully defined a
difference without a difference. Therefore any shaking of the box of marbles
will tend to mix the red and white ones. For instance, if you defined
marbles of different sizes, then shaking a box would tend to segregate them.
In addition, you have compared a non-elastic marble with an elastic
molecule, and then jump to the erroneous conclusion that this means that gas
molecules work the same way in all respects.
When you heat gas in a chamber, it does not lead to homogeneity, rather it
causes motion in the gas caused by differential pressure. This motion can be
very turbulent under certain conditions, but in all cases, there are
differences in pressure between the molecules near the source of heat and
those away from the source of heat. In fact, some of the molecules are
moving faster than others--they are hotter.
In addition, you have carefully decided on gas to represent your point, but
liquids should work in principle just as well. But the same problem applies.
When we heat a liquid it can cause turbulent motion. Some of the "marbles"
are moving faster than other marbles. Let's paint the fast moving "marbles"
red, and leave the slow moving "marbles" blue. In other words, let's say we
color our "marbles" to indicate the differences, rather than to camouflage
it. What would it look like? Maybe something like this:
http://www.llnl.gov/director/ar128045/110values.html
Anyway, if you heat a pot of water to boiling, anyone can see that the
liquid is not homogeneous. It is turbulent. Some of the water forms bubbles
of steam. These bubbles move violently through the liquid, force their way
through the surface tension where the liquid meets the air and explodes into
the atmosphere forming eddies of steam. Anything but homogeneous.
>
> > Please withdraw your erroneous argument.
>
> Would you like to reconsider?
<requoted>
>
> The
> only way left to create non-homogeny is by applying directed
> non-random energy to such systems.
This is absolutely false, as we have seen by many real-world examples that
anyone can directly observe.
(Of course, who knows what you really mean by "directed non-random energy".
I did a Google search, and I could not find where you have actually defined
what you mean by this phrase. If you consider applying heat to be directed
and non-random energy, then nothing probably qualifies as such. Presumably,
you mean intelligently directed.)
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>
R. Dunno
Marbles are not analogous to collisionless particles in an ideal gas.
Sean Pitman
<snip>
> > That is why a non-random energy source is clearly discernable
> > whenever one sees that the red marbles/molecules are all on one side
> > of the box. Do the experiment yourself to test this hypothesis of
> > mine and see if it does not carry with it a very high degree of
> > predictive value.
>
> Again, this is a special case where the non-random energy sources chosen
> cannot discriminate or differentially affect the color property.
So, you agree that in such a special case as I have described, I am
actually correct? Please then, explain this to William who is still
struggling with understanding this concept.
> Yet you are trying to act as if this were a universal case.
Where did you get this impression? I never said that this was a
universal case at all. Different systems behave very differently in a
random energy environment as I have previously described to you. What
I am saying is that given very specific knowledge about the potential
behavior of a particular system in a particular environment it is
possible to detect the activity of high-level informational complexity
and even intelligent design with a great degree of statistical
significance.
As I first suggested to William, the finding of all the red marbles on
one side of the box, after one knows they had reached a homogenous
state, is very good evidence of intelligent design. This is as good a
fact as you will ever come across in life. It carries with it
extremely high predictive value, given that the number of marbles in
the box is more than a thousand or so as I suggested. Anyone can try
this experiment and see for themselves. It is based on very good
science and predictive value that will work for anyone and everyone.
Sean Pitman
> >> If the system is
> >> only partially disturbed then the second state still contains elements
> >> from the first state (entropy has not reached maximum).
> >
> >And how can you recognize this? Can you see a difference? Is this
> >difference statistically calculable even if you didn't know what the
> >initial starting point of the system was?
> >In other words, can you simply walk up to a system for the first
> >time, look at it, and know how far away it is from maximum
> >entropy at that instant in time? Yes, you can.
>
> OK. I'll give you a box of marbles. You tell me whether that is at low
> entropy or high entropy. Tell me the tests you apply and how you
> interpret them. If you want to introduce the term 'disorder' then
> please define it. Just seeing patterns is not sufficient. Note that
> the volume of the box is has not changed, nor has the number of
> marbles in the box.
You can tell by calculating the degree of homogeny, which is quite a
different calculable number for many different potential arrangements
of the marbles. Since the vast majority of potential arrangements will
be at the same maximum homogenous level, that is where you will tend
to find the marbles. Only a relatively few potential patterns are
significantly non-homogenous. Also, differences in homogeny are not
based on some vague human idea of order, but are in fact
mathematically measurable and statistically calculable.
> >The pattern of maximum entropy is quite different from the
> >pattern of a system that has not yet reached maximum entropy.
>
> Please tell me how you would know whether what you are looking at was
> how I had arranged the marbles in the box or how they were after I had
> shaken the box up.
If the marbles were arranged in an extremely non-homogenous way, the
only possible explanation would be that they had been affected by an
extremely directed and deliberate energy source. Random energy simply
does not result in significantly non-homogenous arrangements.
<snip>
> Entropy
> has increased because the molecules now take up the volume of the two
> boxes - there are many more possible positions for them to take up.
> You are now talking about something different to the marbles in a
> closed box.
You think so? Look up what happens to total entropy when two
different types of molecules in the gaseous state are allowed to mix
together. There is no change in total volume and no change in total
energy. Yet, when the different molecules are allowed to mix, even if
the molecules are no more different than being enantiomers of each
other, they will head towards a homogenous mixture with each other
which is in fact a greater total degree of entropy; maximum entropy in
fact.
> Getting back to the original point; how can in Intelligent Design be
> detected in any of these processes?
Because, in this particular situation with red and white marbles, only
intelligence has the ability to direct random energy in such a
non-homogenous way. Random energy, by itself, cannot create such a
degree of non-homogeny in this particular setting. So, when a
significant degree of non-homogeny is recognized in such a situation,
an intelligent cause is the only rational conclusion.
> William
Sean D. Pitman, M.D.
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman
> > We know that at maximum entropy the gas in a container and/or the red
> > and white marbles in our box will be distributed in the most likely
> > statistical locations so that no one location is any more likely to be
> > occupied by a molecule of gas or by a red marble than any other
> > location. This is a statistically measurable number for this system
> > and this number is different for different arrangements of marbles or
> > molecules.
>
> No; you need to establish a partition on the arrangements; then you
> can calculate the entropy of the partition, based on the number of
> arrangements belonging to that partition class.
>
> For example, if we draw a line across the box, we could define a
> partition based on the ratio of red to white marbles on each side of
> the box. Then the maximum entropy class is the one with the same
> red/white ratios on each side as in the whole box. The distibutions in
> this class are not more likely than the ones with other ratios, there
> are just more of them.
Exactly, "there are just more of them". Taken individually, they are
not more likely than any other individual pattern. However, taken as
a category that comes under the heading "maximum homogeny" they are no
longer alone, but have lots and lots of buddies. In fact, they have
exponentially more buddies than those arrangements that come under the
headings of "less-than-maximum homogeny" or "minimum homogeny".
You have it exactly right. Now, would you please try explaining this
concept to William for me?
> > Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
> > arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
> > is just as likely as every other arrangement.
>
> It is.
Not if you are looking at arrangement *patterns* that fit certain
classifications such as "homogenous" vs. "non-homogenous".
> > Certainly, if you are looking for just one
> > very specific pattern where each and every marble is numbered and all
> > the numbers must be in a very specific place, then yes, you'd be
> > correct in saying that all patterns have the same statistical value.
>
> You've got the right idea, but you need to number the positions of the
> marbles, not the marbles themselves. Then you will see that all
> positions are indeed equally likely.
And that is what makes the patterns classifiable and clearly
distinguishable as homogenous and non-homogenous in a mathematically
measurable way with homogenous patterns having a tremendous
(incredibly exponential) advantage over those patterns having less and
less statistical "homogeny".
Sean Pitman
> An easy way to understand this is to determine how much thermodynamic work
> is available. Burn a sorted deck of cards, and burn an unsorted deck of
> cards. You will find they make just as much heat, and your heat engine will
> turn just as many times. The arrangement of the cards is not important to
> their thermodynamic properties, which is the complex arrangement of the
> atoms that make up the paper of the cards. When we burn them, this ordered
> state is destroyed and energy is released.
You can do the same thing with homogenous and non-homogenous molecular
systems. Take two gases that are both flammable and put one in one
side of a glass box and the other in the other side of a glass box.
Then remove the central separation and allow these flammable gases to
mix together. As they mix and head toward a homogenous state of
mixing, they are said to be increasing the entropy of the total system
toward a state of "maximum entropy" which is really nothing more than
a state of maximum homogeny. When they have reached the state of
maximum homogeny, they won't leave it for as long as the level of
random energy remains constant.
Now, according to you, this system would release different amounts of
energy depending upon when you ignited it since the different states
did in fact have different levels of entropy. Is that right?
However, if you actually do this experiment, you will find that the
same amount of total heat is released regardless of when you ignite
the flammable mixture. Even if you burn the individual gases
separately their total combined energy release will be the same as it
is when they are burned in a homogenous mixture.
The energy of a system is not lost or destroyed as the gasses mix
together, heading toward homogeny. It is just redistributed to more
likely locations. The same thing is true of red and white marbles in
a box and of cards in a deck.
> Cards are often used as an illustration of molecular sorting, but don't
> confuse the analogy with the actuality.
There is really no difference as far as the calculation of homogeny is
concerned. The potential arrangements of red and white marbles, when
acted on by a source of random energy, is the same as it is for the
potential arrangements of molecules when acted on by a source of
random energy. There really is no fundamental difference.
Sean Pitman
> I've noticed several misunderstandings in your post:
>
> 1) Incoming solar photons with a frequency distribution which peeks
> around 450 nm (IIRC) *are* directed energy (using your terminology).
>
> (In this context, illuminating your marbles with the light of a red
> dwarf star *will* result in a preponderance of red marbles on one
> side. No source of "higher informational complexity" is needed).
That's true, but I'm not talking about such a situation. I'm talking
about a situation where the source of energy is known to interact
randomly with the system in question.
> 2) Adding heat from below to a homogenous layer of liquid causes
> Benard convection (and all the other stuff that Zachriel has
> described).
Would such convection affect red or white marbles more?
> 3) Entropy is about microscopic disorder, not macroscopic disorder.
Surprisingly, considering the popularity of this assertion, the
mechanics and statistical mathematics of homogeny are exactly the same
for microscopic as well as macroscopic systems. There really is no
fundamental difference in how marbles and molecules relate to the
activity of random energy applied to a system. They both head toward a
maximum homogenous state. For molecules, such a state is called
"maximum entropy", but there really is no difference from the same
state in marbles.
> The entropy difference (or free energy difference) between two
> different DNA sequences with identical contents of G, G, T and A is
> negligible compared to the entropy (or free energy) of the sequences
> themselves.
And the same is true of flammable gasses, homogenously mixed or
non-homogenously unmixed.
> Regards, HRG.
Sean Pitman
> If "arrangement" refers to some perceived overall pattern in the
> *macro*state of the marbles in the bucket, for example, the red
> marbles' being all arranged in a cube in the middle of the bucket,
> then we are talking about something different. No individual
> microstate compatible with the marbles' being arranged to form a cube,
> or any other impressive pattern, is any more likely than any
> individual microstate in which we cannot perceive any pattern.
>
> The issue is that the number of microstates consistent with all the
> red marbles' being in a cube is quite small, whereas the number of
> "noisy" microstates that don't mean anything to us is vastly greater.
> This actually says more about how human pattern-recognition works than
> it does about how thermodynamics works: the reason that patterns are
> unlikely is that the human mind can perceive them in only a tiny
> minority of the possible arrangements of marbles, not because red
> marbles have some built-in tendency to head for pattern-defeating
> "proper places" in the bucket. In reality, each "noisy" microstate is
> as different from the other as it is from the one in which all the red
> marbles are in a cube.
This is not quite true. The state with the red marbles in a cube is
measurably, statistically, mathematically, detectable as being more
"non-homogenous" than what you would refer to as a more "noisy" state.
Homogeny is a measurable quality. It is not just some vague
subjective human notion. Humans do have the ability to recognize the
difference between homogenous and non-homogenous states, but this does
not make this ability purely subjective. Homogeny is mathematically
definable and objectively measurable.
> > For argument's sake lets say that the maximum entropy for a system is
> > assigned the number 100 meaning that when the entropy scale hits the
> > 100 mark the red marbles are in their most likely positions.
>
> If I am imagining your example correctly, and the only difference
> between the marbles is their color, then there is no such thing as a
> "most likely position". No position for any given marble is any more
> likely than any other.
But there is a more likely pattern. It is far more likely that the
observed pattern will be one of the homogenous patterns vs. one of the
far less likely non-homogenous patterns. Again, this is a measurable
difference, not just a subjective interpretation.
> > Now, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that every
> > arrangement of red and white marbles in the box or molecules in a jar
> > is just as likely as every other arrangement. This is clearly
> > incorrect. Certain arrangements are far more statistically likely
> > since various possible arrangements do not all carry the same entropic
> > value. Some arrangements do in fact have far greater entropic value
> > (i.e., are much more statistically likely) than do other potential
> > arrangements of marbles and molecules. Given this ability to assign a
> > different statistical likelihood to various different arrangements of
> > marbles, I can say, with a great deal of predictive value, that a
> > particular arrangement is extremely unlikely to be the result of
> > shaking the box. I could even predict, with a very high degree of
> > accuracy, that certain arrangements of the marbles were in fact the
> > result of deliberate outside manipulation by a much higher order of
> > informational complexity. I can even demonstrate that this is true in
> > a real life experiment over and over again.
>
> Again, I suspect the difference here stems from some confusion about
> what is meant by "arrangement". William is probably talking about
> individual microstates, whereas you are talking about the intuitive
> patterns that a human observer perceives or not in the system.
Nope. I am talking about homogeny vs. non-homogeny. Homogeny is not
just some human perception, but is in fact a mathematically measurable
quality of a system.
> The
> problem is that the appearance or disappearance of patterns in your
> marbles is purely phenomenal; it doesn't correspond meaningfully to
> the actual thermodynamic processes going on, whereas William's model
> does.
You're quite mistaken. Homogeny and non-homogeny is identical to the
mathematics of thermodynamic processes. You and William are mistaken
in thinking that there is no measurable different between various
states along the spectrum of complete homogeny and non-homogeny.
> Ironically, it is precisely *because* there is no meaningful
> physical difference between a box full of patterned marbles and a box
> full of jumbled ones that the pattern tends to disappear quickly when
> the box is shaken: the number of possible arrangements that look
> jumbled to us are vastly greater than the ones in which we can see the
> pattern.
This is not just a phenomenon of appearance. This is a measurable
phenomenon that yields very different values for different patterns.
This is called a measure of homogeny.
> This is one place where your "density of beneficial functions in
> sequence space" analogy might actually come in handy. One can think
> of thermodynamic microstates available to a given system as a sort of
> phase space, with the "rare beneficial sequences" corresponding to
> those rare microstates that would look strongly-patterned to a human
> observer. Only instead of gradually walking the landscape one square
> at a time, the system is jumping all over it. No one square has any
> more entropy than the other.
Because no one square carries any more inherent value than any other
square or energy state, the system as a whole heads toward a
homogenous diffusion through the squares until each square is just as
likely as any other to be occupied by a diffusing object. At this
point, the system as a whole has reached a state of maximum homogeny,
which really is the same thing as a state of "maximum entropy". This
state is a measurable quality that is very different from a state of
maximum non-homogeny or low entropy.
> Von Smith
> Fortuna nimis dat multis, satis nulli. - - [like naturalism and the ToE]
Howard Hershey
Sean Pitman wrote:
>
> Howard Hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote in message news:<4101AFFC...@indiana.edu>...
>
> <snip>
> > > That is why a non-random energy source is clearly discernable
> > > whenever one sees that the red marbles/molecules are all on one side
> > > of the box. Do the experiment yourself to test this hypothesis of
> > > mine and see if it does not carry with it a very high degree of
> > > predictive value.
> >
> > Again, this is a special case where the non-random energy sources chosen
> > cannot discriminate or differentially affect the color property.
>
> So, you agree that in such a special case as I have described, I am
> actually correct?
No, because you are repeatedly confounding entropy with the
*probability* of *similar* distributions of marbles in a box. Let's
take a simple case of a box with 4 marbles, 2 red and 2 blue and mark
the marbles with numbers, so that we have R1, R2, etc. Then we will
shake the box so that the marbles wind up *randomly* distributed. Not
*homogenously* distributed. *Randomly distributed.* There is precisely
one way that the marbles can land with both red marbles to the left and
both blue marbles to the right. There is precisely one way that the
marbles can land with both red marbles to the right and both blue
marbles to the left. There is also only one way that one can have all 4
marbles to the left, and only one way to have all 4 marbles to the
right. There is also only one way to have marble R1 and B1 to the left
(leaving R2 and B2 to the right). But one can also have R2 and B2 to
the left; R1 and B2; and R2 and B1. That is, there are 4 different ways
one can have one red and one blue on each side. There are only two
different ways to have 3 marbles (two red and one blue) on one side and
the remaining blue on the other. Because we can identify the numbers,
we can distinguish between these two possibilities. And *each* one of
these arrangements has an identical probability. But when we cannot
identify each individual marble, we will see *more* cases -- 4 -- where
there are one red and one blue on each side than cases where both
marbles on one side are the same color - 1 for those cases where we see
two marbles on a side. That *is* what you expect from a *random* distribution.
If you expand the N, of course, you will get a bell-shaped curve of
distribution, with the *mean* (and median and mode in this case) number
of marbles on each side is a 50:50 distribution and the *mean*
distribution of colors is also 50:50. That does not mean that there is
ever *exactly* a 50:50 ratio of either number or color. The standard
deviation from that mean is a function of N. And, just as is the case
in the simple example above, *if* one could number the marbles, the
probability of any *single* specified distribution, including the
extreme of all one color on one side, is the same as the probability of
any other distribution. Just like above, the extreme of all one color
on one side only appears once, whereas there are many different ways to
form a distribution of exactly 50:50 red:blue. That is in the nature of
a bell-shaped curve.
But the *fact* is that each single distribution of marbles has the same
probability, including those where all the red marbles are on one side.
But there are many more ways to distribute the marbles so as to get a
50:50 ratio (exactly). There are also many more ways to distribute the
marbles so as to get a 49:51 ratio, but fewer ways than the 50:50 ratio.
That is what a bell-shaped curve looks like. In the case of high N,
the curve is very narrow. In the case of low N, the curve is broader.
But each single distribution has the same probability.
> Please then, explain this to William who is still
> struggling with understanding this concept.
So do you. Mistaking the different probabilities of different
distributions along a bell-shaped curve as some sort of evidence of
entropy is nonsense. Thinking this has something to do with life is
even worse. Failing to understand that the probability of any single
fully specified distribution is the same as any others is *your*
problem, not William's.
> > Yet you are trying to act as if this were a universal case.
>
> Where did you get this impression? I never said that this was a
> universal case at all. Different systems behave very differently in a
> random energy environment as I have previously described to you. What
> I am saying is that given very specific knowledge about the potential
> behavior of a particular system in a particular environment it is
> possible to detect the activity of high-level informational complexity
> and even intelligent design with a great degree of statistical
> significance.
And by pointing out that this is a special case, I am denying that one
can do so in the other cases, where perceived *order* occurs as a
consequence of energy input. Those are the cases where the energy input
interacts with the property being examined. And living things are
notorious for extracting energy to create perceived order. In fact,
that capacity to extract energy from its environment to create more of
its complicated self is one of the defining characteristics of "life".
>
> As I first suggested to William, the finding of all the red marbles on
> one side of the box, after one knows they had reached a homogenous
> state, is very good evidence of intelligent design.
*Random* state. Not homogenous. Can you at least understand that
distinction?
> This is as good a
> fact as you will ever come across in life. It carries with it
> extremely high predictive value, given that the number of marbles in
> the box is more than a thousand or so as I suggested. Anyone can try
> this experiment and see for themselves. It is based on very good
> science and predictive value that will work for anyone and everyone.
And, as I point out, it is entirely irrelevant when applied to life.
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
Howard Hershey
Once you cut through the nonsense language, I think that what Sean is
saying is that, at high N, there are distributions of red and blue that
lie far from the mean on the bell-shaped curve. Statistically, one can
choose to regard such distributions as so unlikely by chance alone that,
when observed, they can, with a certain probability of being correct, be
attributed to *cause*. Identifying that *causal* agency as being due to
intelligence is, however, unwarranted based *merely* on the declaration
that, most likely (and a specific probability level can be inserted
here), the distribution is so far removed from the expectation of random
chance that some *cause* is more likely.
And I certainly agree. Now all Sean has to do is present his *evidence*
that the *cause* is an intelligent agent rather than due to the
interaction of a property with its environment. He cannot simply assert
that an intelligent agent is the *cause* after rejecting the hypothesis
that the distribution is random.
His language, of course, sounds like he has no understanding of
statistical analysis and probability.
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
R. Baldwin
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
Sean, if the marbles have different color, or any other physical difference,
then there exists a physical process that can sort them without intelligent
help. The only process you have imagined is shaking, but that is not the
only possible process.
One poster has already pointed out to you that if the marbles are only
exposed to red light, the difference disappears and all the marbles are red.
Alternately, if the marbles were exposed to very high energy blue light, the
red marbles might receive enough kinetic energy to move out of the white
ones.
You are overconstraining your hypothetical situation in a way that does not
correspond to real-worl physics or chemistry.
R. Baldwin
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
There is a tremendous difference between molecules and marbles. Molecules do
not really form an ideal gas. They intereact and bond with each other. They
form dipoles. They share electrons. They decay. They react spontaneously,
and non-spontaneously with the help of "random, non-directed" energy.
You are badly abusing thermodynamics. Your argument is based on a flawed
extrapolation of a freshman-level analogy Feynman used to explain
statistical mechanics.
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
news:<hkk2g0p4hkjct44a0...@4ax.com>...
>
> > >I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
> > >independently of human perceptions of "order".
> >
> > Please explain how to get more useful energy out of the box of sorted
> > marbles than you can get from the box of mixed marbles. Until you can
> > demonstrate the difference in useful energy, you are not talking about
> > entropy.
>
> Consider how you would get "useful energy" out of a system composed of
> two populations of non-homogenous gas molecules that are only
> different from each other by being enatomers of each other. And yet,
> if allowed to mix at a certain level of random energy/heat, they will
> do so until they reach their maximum state of homogeny, which is also
> their maximum state of entropy for that level of system energy. They
> will not go the other direction, but will proceed steadily toward a
> state of statistical homogeny.
You are alluding to the Gibbs Paradox. Basically, we have a container
divided by a door. On one side is gas A, and on the other gas B. When
happens when we remove the door? Well, it depends on whether gas A molecules
have a great affinity for other A molecules or B molecules. The process of
mixing can therefore be either endothermic or exothermic. If the gases are
indistinguishable in this manner, then there is no change in energy. The
mixing is merely statistical and irrelevant to thermodynamics (work), much
like shaking a box of marbles which are identical except for the irrelevancy
of color.
This website has a pretty good explanation of entropy and enthralpy.
http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/doitpoms/tlplib/CD4/basic.php
Bob Pease
"R. Baldwin" <res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote in message
news:kjwMc.1735$qT3...@nwrddc03.gnilink.net...
Yup.
I find it remarkable that ID'ers will use highly disguised Pseudoscience,
and present it as evidence of some master hidden teleology at best, or of
Jehovah at worst.
From my ancient and limited knowledge of these matters, it is complete
blather to talk about such things as the BURNING shuffled deck, except for a
poser to get Freshmen to "Find the Fallacy"
High school AP Problem candidate...
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
Nonsense. It only takes a natural force that is sensitive to color. Shaking
a box will segregate marbles of different sizes or weight but will have no
effect on color. Other natural forces will segregate different colored
particles. This has been pointed out to you repeatedly.
>
> > So is it your claim that I am wrong about living
> > systems being able to direct random energy in non-random ways?
>
> This is not my claim and it never was. I've always said that living
> systems have the ability to direct random energy in non-random ways.
> I'm not sure why you would have gotten any other impression.
>
> > > However, humans can
> > > recognize when a system is not at its maximum entropic state.
> >
> > IOW, you are substituting your intuition about the *results* for an
> > actual calculation based on principles.
>
> Not at all. Humans have an ability to recognize when red and white
> marbles are in a non-homogenous state vs. a homogenous state in the
> same way that we can also recognize when red and translucent gas
> molecules are in a non-homogenous state vs. a homogenous state. This
> ability is not a mere "intuition". It is also a calculable property
> that is statistically demonstrable. Homogeny is not just some vague
> human value judgement. It is a real mathematical property that is
> unique from non-homogenous arrangements of either gas molecules or red
> and white marbles. More non-homogenous arrangements are statistically
> different, visibly different, from more homogenous arrangements. The
> have different mathematically properties.
>
> The reason why non-homogenous gases *always* mix together until they
> become homogenous at a certain temperature is
> . . .
Gases are normally not immisible because the bonding between molecules is
very low compared to their vibrational energy.
.. . .
> because there are so
> many more homogenous ways to be compared to the non-homogenous
> possibilities.
<snip>
Your reasoning should apply equally to liquids. As there are plenty of
immisible liquids, your reasoning is faulty.
Zachriel
>
<snip>
>
> Your reasoning should apply equally to liquids. As there are plenty of
> immisible liquids, your reasoning is faulty.
>
Sorry, spellchecker was off for some reason. That's "immiscible".
> This website has a pretty good explanation of entropy and enthralpy.
> http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/doitpoms/tlplib/CD4/basic.php
Misspelled "enthalpy", too. I thought it was worth a correction for those
that Google. Also that website seems to be down. Here is Google's cached
version:
http://tinyurl.com/4kg35
Mark Isaak
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote in message news:<hkk2g0p4hkjct44a0...@4ax.com>...
>
>> >I haven't done this at all. Entropy can be and is calculated
>> >independently of human perceptions of "order".
>>
>> Please explain how to get more useful energy out of the box of sorted
>> marbles than you can get from the box of mixed marbles. Until you can
>> demonstrate the difference in useful energy, you are not talking about
>> entropy.
>
>Consider how you would get "useful energy" out of a system composed of
>two populations of non-homogenous gas molecules that are only
>different from each other by being enatomers of each other. [...]
You were talking about marbles. Let's stick with marbles.
As I see it, you have specified a sorting key (color) which has no
physical relevance to the system, and then you claim that the
configuration of that key has physical relevance to the system. The
two conditions appear mutually exclusive.
Dan Wood
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
<"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv1.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote in
message news:<L_6dnQ2exfe...@adelphia.com>...
From this thread, one gets the impression that the second law of thermo.
applies _only_ to the micro world. I.e. atoms and molecules. Am I missing
something? My G.grandparent's home was built with stone held together with
cement, timbers and cut lumber. A very nice home in it's day. But over
the decades since their death, this stone house has become increasingly
deteriorated, disordered, crumbled almost collapsed and gradually turning
into total ruins.
This is macro! And the 2/nd law applies. In fact the 2/nd law applies to
everything; not just micro!
Dr. Wood
William
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>tel...@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote
>
>> OK. I'll give you a box of marbles. You tell me whether that is at low
>> entropy or high entropy. Tell me the tests you apply and how you
>> interpret them. If you want to introduce the term 'disorder' then
>> please define it. Just seeing patterns is not sufficient. Note that
>> the volume of the box is has not changed, nor has the number of
>> marbles in the box.
>
>You can tell by calculating the degree of homogeny, which is quite a
>different calculable number for many different potential arrangements
>of the marbles. Since the vast majority of potential arrangements will
>be at the same maximum homogenous level, that is where you will tend
>to find the marbles. Only a relatively few potential patterns are
>significantly non-homogenous. Also, differences in homogeny are not
>based on some vague human idea of order, but are in fact
>mathematically measurable and statistically calculable.
It seems to me that you are beating a dead horse with this
marbles-in-a-box example. It never was a good one for describing
entropy. Any state of the marbles is at a state of equilibrium and any
arrangement of the marbles is as likely as any other. If the box size
is fixed and the number of marbles is fixed then no state is
entropically any different from any other state. The fact that you may
be able to perceive patterns in some arrangements is completely
irrelevant. You are basing you definition on the fact that just a few
arrangements 'look' patterned and all 'non-patterned' states look the
same. But, of course, any particular arrangement is as likely or
unlikely as any other state.
>> >The pattern of maximum entropy is quite different from the
>> >pattern of a system that has not yet reached maximum entropy.
>>
>> Please tell me how you would know whether what you are looking at was
>> how I had arranged the marbles in the box or how they were after I had
>> shaken the box up.
>
>If the marbles were arranged in an extremely non-homogenous way, the
>only possible explanation would be that they had been affected by an
>extremely directed and deliberate energy source. Random energy simply
>does not result in significantly non-homogenous arrangements.
You were equating 'homogenous' with 'looking patterned'. I assume that
is what you mean by the word. I could place the marbles in a state
where no pattern could be perceived. I could then shake the box and
perceive a pattern. Does that mean entropy has reversed?
><snip>
>> Entropy
>> has increased because the molecules now take up the volume of the two
>> boxes - there are many more possible positions for them to take up.
>> You are now talking about something different to the marbles in a
>> closed box.
>
>You think so? Look up what happens to total entropy when two
>different types of molecules in the gaseous state are allowed to mix
>together. There is no change in total volume and no change in total
>energy. Yet, when the different molecules are allowed to mix, even if
>the molecules are no more different than being enantiomers of each
>other, they will head towards a homogenous mixture with each other
>which is in fact a greater total degree of entropy; maximum entropy in
>fact.
That is different again. Where there is a chemical reaction or where
molecules become differently arranged then entropy may increase. That
is not the same as the marbles example.
>> Getting back to the original point; how can in Intelligent Design be
>> detected in any of these processes?
>
>Because, in this particular situation with red and white marbles, only
>intelligence has the ability to direct random energy in such a
>non-homogenous way. Random energy, by itself, cannot create such a
>degree of non-homogeny in this particular setting. So, when a
>significant degree of non-homogeny is recognized in such a situation,
>an intelligent cause is the only rational conclusion.
I honestly do not understand how you could come to this conclusion. It
seems you are equating non-random with intelligence. If you shake a
box of marbles and the red ones always line up on one side of the box
then you will indeed suspect that there is something non-random going
on. But why should that point to an intelligent cause? Particularly if
you have not detected some external intelligent agent (ie, seen
someone do it). The most likely cause would be a physical imbalance
between the red and white marbles (weight, perhaps). You would have to
exhaust all the possible physical causes before looking for some
invisible non-physical intelligence. And that would then fall into the
God-of-the-Gaps area which puts supernatural explanations into the
gaps that science has not (yet) explained. That has always been a
weakness in the ID hypothesis.
William
Zachriel
"Dan Wood" <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:VKAMc.31121$Yw3....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>
> "Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
> news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
> > "Zachriel"
> <"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv1.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote
in
> message news:<L_6dnQ2exfe...@adelphia.com>...
>
>
> From this thread, one gets the impression that the second law of thermo.
> applies _only_ to the micro world. I.e. atoms and molecules. Am I missing
> something? My G.grandparent's home was built with stone held together with
> cement, timbers and cut lumber. A very nice home in it's day. But over
> the decades since their death, this stone house has become increasingly
> deteriorated, disordered, crumbled almost collapsed and gradually turning
> into total ruins.
> This is macro! And the 2/nd law applies. In fact the 2/nd law applies to
> everything; not just micro!
Actually, the 2nd law properly applies only to the macroscopic world. The
microscopic world is described by quantum mechanics.
The decay of a house is a very complicated process, but at no point in the
process is the 2nd law violated. The building of a house is a very
complicated process, but at no point in the process is the 2nd law violated.
Let's look at the latter example first. When a mason lifts a stone, entropy
increases. By far, the vast majority of this entropy is in the mason as he
or she burns food for energy, breaking down the complex molecules of diet
into CO2 and H2O, most of the energy so released being lost forever as waste
heat. Entropy also increases when the mortar sets, complex molecules forming
through the sacrifice of energy lost forever as waste heat. However, there
is no significant change in entropy between different rearrangements of the
stones themselves, only in the food being burnt as fuel to lift and move the
stones, and the resultant waste heat.
When a house decays, the complex molecules that make up the mortar and stone
break apart, releasing residual heat. At some point, the gravitational
energy which was so painstakingly built up by the mason through the burning
of food for energy is lost when the walls fall down.
At all times entropy tends to increase. The ordering of the bricks is
completely irrelevant, and is just a matter of human preference.
Dan Wood
established
of nature. Nothing violates the 2/nd law!
>
> Let's look at the latter example first. When a mason lifts a stone,
entropy
> increases. By far, the vast majority of this entropy is in the mason as he
> or she burns food for energy, breaking down the complex molecules of diet
> into CO2 and H2O, most of the energy so released being lost forever as
waste
> heat. Entropy also increases when the mortar sets, complex molecules
forming
> through the sacrifice of energy lost forever as waste heat. However, there
> is no significant change in entropy between different rearrangements of
the
> stones themselves, only in the food being burnt as fuel to lift and move
the
> stones, and the resultant waste heat.
>
spontaneously assemble themselves. Furthermore, a gorilla could expend
the same energy breaking down complex molecules, release heat for
decades and never build a house of equal complexity. Something is
missing where the gorilla is concerned. IOW energy alone is incapable.
>
> When a house decays, the complex molecules that make up the mortar and
stone
> break apart, releasing residual heat. At some point, the gravitational
> energy which was so painstakingly built up by the mason through the
burning
> of food for energy is lost when the walls fall down.
>
level is much greater than it was ninety years ago. The 2/nd law
is not restricted to quantum mechanics. Ninety years hence the
entropy will be approaching maximum.
>
> At all times entropy tends to increase. The ordering of the bricks is
> completely irrelevant, and is just a matter of human preference.
>
origionally devised by N. Carnot in in order to understand
and improve efficiency of steam engines.
The 2/nd law was first conceived as a real world engineering
tool.
DR. Wood
>
>
Dan Ensign
<snip>
> This goes without saying. The 2/nd law is perhaps the most solidly
> established
> of nature. Nothing violates the 2/nd law!
That we know of.
<snip>
> ... today the entropy (defined here as disorder)
> level is much greater than it was ninety years ago. The 2/nd law
> is not restricted to quantum mechanics. Ninety years hence the
> entropy will be approaching maximum.
There is no entropy change involved in the re-ordering of macroscopic
objects, including reordering bricks in the shape of a house into the
shape of a pile of bricks.
<snip>
> You cannot get away from the macro. The 2nd law was
> origionally devised by N. Carnot in in order to understand
> and improve efficiency of steam engines.
> The 2/nd law was first conceived as a real world engineering
> tool.
Since Carnot worked a good generation before Clausius -- who, according
to my physical chemistry textbook, introduced entropy in 1865 -- this
can't be true.
This website:
http://www.wolframscience.com/reference/notes/1019b
Has Clausius and Kelvin coming up with the 1st and 2nd laws "around
1850," but that's probably poor language (or 1865 is around 1850, I
don't know).
--
Dan Ensign
"If life gives you lemons, throw them in a quart of vodka." -- Red Green
Dan Ensign
"Zachriel"
<"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv1.gc.dca.giganews.com>
wrote in message news:<L_6dnQ2exfe...@adelphia.com>...
No one has addressed this yet, so I'm butting in ...
> > An easy way to understand this is to determine how much thermodynamic work
> > is available. Burn a sorted deck of cards, and burn an unsorted deck of
> > cards. You will find they make just as much heat,
Right, because the chemical composition and (ideally) the products of
the combustion are exactly the same for each case.
> > and your heat engine will
> > turn just as many times.
But only because there is no entropy difference in shuffled vs.
unshuffled cards -- assuming "ideal playing cards" which, have an
infinite heat capacity, so they don't get hotter due to the friction of
shuffling. :)
> > The arrangement of the cards is not important to
> > their thermodynamic properties, which is the complex arrangement of the
> > atoms that make up the paper of the cards. When we burn them, this ordered
> > state is destroyed and energy is released.
> You can do the same thing with homogenous and non-homogenous molecular
> systems. Take two gases that are both flammable and put one in one
> side of a glass box and the other in the other side of a glass box.
> Then remove the central separation and allow these flammable gases to
> mix together. As they mix and head toward a homogenous state of
> mixing, they are said to be increasing the entropy of the total system
> toward a state of "maximum entropy" which is really nothing more than
> a state of maximum homogeny. When they have reached the state of
> maximum homogeny, they won't leave it for as long as the level of
> random energy remains constant.
>
> Now, according to you, this system would release different amounts of
> energy depending upon when you ignited it since the different states
> did in fact have different levels of entropy. Is that right?
That's more or less right, if you consider the proper kind of energy.
The amount of *heat* released would be the same, regardless of mixing,
assuming that the reaction products are the same, say for the simple
case of burning hydrocarbons in oxygen all the way to CO2 and H2O.
The *free energy change* will be different if you start with a mixture
or discrete containers of two flammable hydrocarbons + O2 burning to CO2
and H2O -- see below.
> However, if you actually do this experiment, you will find that the
> same amount of total heat is released regardless of when you ignite
> the flammable mixture.
Yes.
> Even if you burn the individual gases
> separately their total combined energy release will be the same as it
> is when they are burned in a homogenous mixture.
Nope.
This can be examined using a direct calculation, but for simplicity
consider the following reactions:
CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O [reaction A]
C2H6 + 3.5 O2 -> 2 CO2 + 3 H2O [reaction B]
i.e., burning methane (A) and ethane (B) in oxygen.
If we burn one mole of each, separately, then there is a certain (easily
determined) free energy change for A and for B; at constant pressure
we'll use the Gibbs energy and call them deltaG[A] and deltaG[B].
If we mix the gases together, then burn them, the total free energy
change is NOT deltaG[A] + deltaG[B]. Since the Gibbs energy G is a
state quantity, then mixing the gases together and burning them results
in the same free energy change as burning them, then mixing them
together. Therefore, the free energy change of burning the mixture is
less than the free energy change of burning the gases separately. The
difference in entropy change is the entropy change in mixing 1 mole of
CO2 + 2 more moles CO2 + 2 moles H2O + 3 more moles H2O.
The molar entropy change of mixing ideal gases is
deltaS[mix] = - R * (sum on j) y[j] * ln y[j]
where R is the gas constant an y[j] is the mole fraction of component j.
The change in the entropy change for A + B simultaneously compared to A
and B separately is
delta(deltaS) = - R * (.375 * ln .375 + .625 * ln .625)
= + 5.501 J/(mol K)
and the free energy change difference is (at 298 K)
delta(deltaG) = - T * delta(deltaS)
= - 298 K * 5.501 J/(mol K)
= - 1639 J/mol = - 1.639 kJ/mol
What this *means* is that the maximum work available from burning a
mixture of 1 mole methane and 1 mole ethane is about 1.6 kJ *greater*
than the work available from burning the two gases separately (and
keeping the reaction products separated).
As I said before, the *heat* released in each case is the same.
> The energy of a system is not lost or destroyed as the gasses mix
> together, heading toward homogeny. It is just redistributed to more
> likely locations. The same thing is true of red and white marbles in
> a box and of cards in a deck.
The energy is not lost on mixing -- but it's more homogenously
distributed (exactly the same as saying, The entropy has increased),
meaning that less of it is available to do work.
<snip>
R. Baldwin
news:1ghgbd7.humn2a1wh3x4wN%danarchy6LESPAM_CEST@INTERDIT!!yahoo.com...
> Dan Wood <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
[snip]
>
> > You cannot get away from the macro. The 2nd law was
> > origionally devised by N. Carnot in in order to understand
> > and improve efficiency of steam engines.
> > The 2/nd law was first conceived as a real world engineering
> > tool.
>
> Since Carnot worked a good generation before Clausius -- who, according
> to my physical chemistry textbook, introduced entropy in 1865 -- this
> can't be true.
>
> This website:
> http://www.wolframscience.com/reference/notes/1019b
> Has Clausius and Kelvin coming up with the 1st and 2nd laws "around
> 1850," but that's probably poor language (or 1865 is around 1850, I
> don't know).
I believe you're right. Carnot produced a theorem about the efficiency of
reversible engines that Clausius and Kelvin showed was a consequence of the
2nd Law. The Carnot cycle dates to 1824, according to Halliday & Resnick.
R. Baldwin
>
> "Zachriel"
> <"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv1.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote
in
> message news:AMadnfCImpa...@adelphia.com...
> >
> > "Dan Wood" <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
Don't be so sure that a decayed house has more entropy than an undecayed
house. You will have to do the math for a large number of complicated
chemical reactions, and drawing the system boundary is very difficult. Some
of the house's atoms are now part of the atmosphere, some are now part of
organisms, and some of the atmosphere is now part of the decayed house. Some
of the house's atoms leached into the groundwater.
The entropy of the house plus its environment increased, but certainly did
not reach maximum. The configuration of the parts of the house is not
relevant.
[snip]
Zachriel
Well, apparently there was some confusion when you said I had asserted it
only applied to the microscopic world, when it is quite the contrary.
> >
> > Let's look at the latter example first. When a mason lifts a stone,
> entropy
> > increases. By far, the vast majority of this entropy is in the mason as
he
> > or she burns food for energy, breaking down the complex molecules of
diet
> > into CO2 and H2O, most of the energy so released being lost forever as
> waste
> > heat. Entropy also increases when the mortar sets, complex molecules
> forming
> > through the sacrifice of energy lost forever as waste heat. However,
there
> > is no significant change in entropy between different rearrangements of
> the
> > stones themselves, only in the food being burnt as fuel to lift and move
> the
> > stones, and the resultant waste heat.
> >
> I agree, however, the stones, timbers, and other building materials did
not
> spontaneously assemble themselves.
From the thermodynamic viewpoint, they are assembled by workers who burn
food for energy, most of which is lost as waste heat. There is no
significant difference in entropy of a stone on a pile and a stone in a wall
or stones set to spell out your name.
> Furthermore, a gorilla could expend
> the same energy breaking down complex molecules, release heat for
> decades and never build a house of equal complexity. Something is
> missing where the gorilla is concerned. IOW energy alone is incapable.
Yes, the gorilla can't read blueprints--nor would they care to. This has
nothing to do with thermodynamics.
http://www.free-definition.com/Thermodynamics.html
> >
> > When a house decays, the complex molecules that make up the mortar and
> stone
> > break apart, releasing residual heat. At some point, the gravitational
> > energy which was so painstakingly built up by the mason through the
> burning
> > of food for energy is lost when the walls fall down.
> >
> I understand this, but today the entropy (defined here as disorder)
> level is much greater than it was ninety years ago. The 2/nd law
> is not restricted to quantum mechanics. Ninety years hence the
> entropy will be approaching maximum.
As long as the Sun burns, there will be ample energy. Plants will continue
to assemble complex molecules, animals will continue to eat plants, and as
long as we take care of ourselves, masons will still burn fuel and still lay
stones (most of the energy being wasted according to the known rules of
thermodynamics).
> >
> > At all times entropy tends to increase. The ordering of the bricks is
> > completely irrelevant, and is just a matter of human preference.
> >
> You cannot get away from the macro. The 2nd law was
> origionally devised by N. Carnot in in order to understand
> and improve efficiency of steam engines.
> The 2/nd law was first conceived as a real world engineering
> tool.
I don't think you read my comments carefully. Let me quote from our earlier
exchange.
> > > This is macro! And the 2/nd law applies. In fact the 2/nd law applies
to
> > > everything; not just micro!
> > <snip>
> >
> > Actually, the 2nd law properly applies only to the macroscopic world.
The
> > microscopic world is described by quantum mechanics.
The 2nd Law applies to the *macroscopic* world. But putting stones in a
square, or a circle, or a pile, or a jumble, has nothing whatsoever to do
with the thermodynamics of stones. The thermodynamic order of stones is in
their molecular structure.
An ordered deck of cards and a shuffled deck of cards have exactly the same
entropy. The only difference in entropy is in the dealer who has to eat to
burn fuel to either sort or shuffle the cards accordingly.
Dan Ensign
<snip>
See, when I make horrible errors like this, I wonder how my plan to take
over the world will ever get off the ground.
We're considering
CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O [reaction A]
C2H6 + 3.5 O2 -> 2 CO2 + 3 H2O [reaction B]
and my errors are corrected below. (Oh, shame!)
> The molar entropy change of mixing ideal gases is
>
> deltaS[mix] = - R * (sum on j) y[j] * ln y[j]
>
> where R is the gas constant an y[j] is the mole fraction of component j.
> The change in the entropy change for A + B simultaneously compared to A
> and B separately is
>
> delta(deltaS) = - R * (.375 * ln .375 + .625 * ln .625)
> = + 5.501 J/(mol K)
This is the difference in entropy of the mixture of products. The value
for the entropy of the mixture of reactants is 6.359 J/(mol K).
>
> and the free energy change difference is (at 298 K)
>
> delta(deltaG) = - T * delta(deltaS)
> = - 298 K * 5.501 J/(mol K)
> = - 1639 J/mol = - 1.639 kJ/mol
Bad Dan! Due to being mixed, the entropy change to the final state is
(5.501 * 8 - 6.359 * 7.5) J/K = - 3.685 J/K different, and the relevant
free energy change due to the gases being mixed at 298 K is 1098 J.
(The 8 and 7.5 come from the stoichiometry.)
>
> What this *means* is that the maximum work available from burning a
> mixture of 1 mole methane and 1 mole ethane is about 1.6 kJ *greater*
> than the work available from burning the two gases separately (and
> keeping the reaction products separated).
Except that's wrong, Dan. You get 1098 J *less* possible work out of
burning a mixture of 1 mole methane and 1 mole ethane with the
appropriate amounts of oxygen than if you burned them separately.
This means that, in Sean Pitman's original question with gases which are
separated by a divider, then the divider removed, is there any energetic
difference on burning the gases at different times as they mix?
It's clear now that, if the divider is removed and the materials ignited
immediately, then (assuming there is no mixing as the reactions
proceed), then you get more possible work than if you let the gases mix
completely, then ignite them. The intermediate states (lighting the
gases as they mix) should all have a different free energy changes upon
ignition somewhere between these two extremes.
> As I said before, the *heat* released in each case is the same.
>
> > The energy of a system is not lost or destroyed as the gasses mix
> > together, heading toward homogeny. It is just redistributed to more
> > likely locations. The same thing is true of red and white marbles in
> > a box and of cards in a deck.
>
> The energy is not lost on mixing -- but it's more homogenously
> distributed (exactly the same as saying, The entropy has increased),
> meaning that less of it is available to do work.
Somehow this turned out being right, anyway.
Oh, how will I ever educate on Pax Thermodynamica when I make such
errors! My poor and inadequate apologies to anyone who may have been
hurt igniting flammable gases by my calculation errors. I kowtow to the
superior intellects of *real* physical chemists, and, since this
prevents me from ever joining the ranks, even as the guy who sweeps
behind the EPR spectrometer, and I'm seriously considering changing my
major to Family and Consumer Sciences. After all, I *do* make better
than ordinary onion soup (and I do it right the first time).
Sean Pitman
> > > Again, this is a special case where the non-random energy sources chosen
> > > cannot discriminate or differentially affect the color property.
> >
> > So, you agree that in such a special case as I have described, I am
> > actually correct?
>
> No, because you are repeatedly confounding entropy with the
> *probability* of *similar* distributions of marbles in a box.
There is no fundamental difference. Various levels of molecular
entropy show the very same probabilities of similar distributions of
molecules as there are with red and white marbles in a box.
> Let's
> take a simple case of a box with 4 marbles, 2 red and 2 blue and mark
> the marbles with numbers, so that we have R1, R2, etc. Then we will
> shake the box so that the marbles wind up *randomly* distributed. Not
> *homogenously* distributed. *Randomly distributed.*
Oh please, give me a break! Homogeneity is the result of random
distribution of many objects. Look up the term "homogenous". What do
you think it means? Often, when a system is said to have reached
"maximum entropy" it is also said to have become maximally
"homogenous". What do you think that means Howard?
It seems to me that you are just trying desperately to find something,
anything, so you don't have to admit that a creationist was actually
right about anything.
> There is precisely
> one way that the marbles can land with both red marbles to the left and
> both blue marbles to the right.
Actually, in this narrow box of yours there are several ways in which
both blue marbles could be on the right and both red marbles on the
left. You could have R1R2B1B2 or R1R2B2B1 or R2R1B1B2 or R2R1B2B1
> There is precisely one way that the
> marbles can land with both red marbles to the right and both blue
> marbles to the left.
Wrong again, for the same reason.
> There is also only one way that one can have all 4
> marbles to the left, and only one way to have all 4 marbles to the
> right.
Wrong. There are many ways to get all four marbles on the right or
left. Say, for example, that you have 4 potential spots on each side
of the box. Each of these spots could be filled by any one of the
marbles. Thus, there well over a hundred ways that each side of the
box could be occupied by all 4 marbles (see below for similar
illustration).
> There is also only one way to have marble R1 and B1 to the left
> (leaving R2 and B2 to the right).
Actually not. Given 4 spots on the left and 4 spots on the right,
there are 12 ways that R1 and B1 could be on the left, leaving R2 and
B2 somewhere on the right.
For example:
R1B1_ _
R1_B1_
R1_ _ B1
B1R1_ _
B1_ R1_
B1_ _ R1
_ R1B1_
_R1_ B1
_B1R1_
_B1_R1
_ _ R1B1
_ _ B1R1
It is much the same as figuring the odds of pulling one marble of each
one of three colors out of a box in three pulls with red, blue and
yellow marbles (randomly distributed and equal in overall number). If
one is not concerned about the order in which the marbles are drawn
out form the box the odds are 3/3 * 2/3 * 1/3 = 6/27 or 1 in 4.5. Why
is this? Because any one of the marbles can be in any one of the
spots. That means there are many more ways to get the same ratio or
pattern than if a particular marble has to be in a particular spot.
Now, what are the odds of getting all red marbles in three draws? It
is 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/27. So you see, it is 4.5 times more likely
to get a mixture of all three colors than it is to get just one
particular color. But, what if one is not concerned about what color
is drawn as long as all three draws are the same. The odds of this
happening would be 3/3 * 1/3 * 1/3 = 3/27 or 1/9. So you see, the
odds of this pattern happening are only half as good as the first
pattern.
> But one can also have R2 and B2 to
> the left; R1 and B2; and R2 and B1. That is, there are 4 different ways
> one can have one red and one blue on each side.
Again you are wrong, but I leave you to figure that out for yourself.
> There are only two
> different ways to have 3 marbles (two red and one blue) on one side and
> the remaining blue on the other.
Wrong . . .
> Because we can identify the numbers,
> we can distinguish between these two possibilities.
Yes we can, but not like you have done it. You need to read a bit
more about how statistical likelihoods are done in such scenarios.
Especially before you go to a place like Las Vegas.
> And *each* one of
> these arrangements has an identical probability.
Not like you have done it. Each one of the possible arrangements does
have the same possibility, but you haven't picked up on how to figure
out just how many possible arrangements there are for a given
situation.
> But when we cannot
> identify each individual marble, we will see *more* cases -- 4 -- where
> there are one red and one blue on each side than cases where both
> marbles on one side are the same color - 1 for those cases where we see
> two marbles on a side. That *is* what you expect from a *random* distribution.
Well, even though your math is way off, the concept is correct. The
fact that certain patterns carry with them far more possible
arrangements than do other patterns makes them both statistically and
visually distinguishable. Homogenous arrangements of either molecules
or marbles, acted on by a source of random energy, are much more
likely than non-homogenous arrangements for this very reason - there
are so many more possible homogenous than non-homogenous arrangements
(exponentially more in fact). It is because of this very thing that
highly non-homogenous arrangements can be mathematically and even
visually distinguished from more homogenous arrangements.
Oh, and go ahead and use the term more or less "random" if you prefer.
It really makes no difference what you call this effect. The fact of
the matter is that various patterns can be distinguished from each
other at a glance as having more or less "homogeny" or "randomness" or
whatever else you want to call it.
> If you expand the N, of course, you will get a bell-shaped curve of
> distribution, with the *mean* (and median and mode in this case) number
> of marbles on each side is a 50:50 distribution and the *mean*
> distribution of colors is also 50:50.
Well, at least you got this part right.
> That does not mean that there is
> ever *exactly* a 50:50 ratio of either number or color. The standard
> deviation from that mean is a function of N.
Also correct . . .
> And, just as is the case
> in the simple example above, *if* one could number the marbles, the
> probability of any *single* specified distribution, including the
> extreme of all one color on one side, is the same as the probability of
> any other distribution.
That's true. However, with the marbles unnumbered, there are far far
far far less ways to get all the marbles of one color on one side
relative to the number of ways of not doing this. That is why you can
distinguish this pattern as extremely unlikely, for all practical
purposes impossible, outside of deliberate design. Patterns such as
this are not mere human ideas of "order" either. They are
statistically distinguishable from many other potential and more
likely patterns. This pattern is *mathematically* unlikely. It is
statistically non-homogenous or non-random - as you would like to have
it described.
> Just like above, the extreme of all one color
> on one side only appears once, whereas there are many different ways to
> form a distribution of exactly 50:50 red:blue. That is in the nature of
> a bell-shaped curve.
That's right! And that is exactly the basis for detecting random from
non-random activity in such a situation as looking at patterns of red
and white marbles. Consider again that one sees a box of 1000 red and
white marbles being shaken vigorously and randomly for some
considerable amount of time. Then, this box is left in a room for a
while out of sight. When asked to open the box, what should one assume
if the all the red marbles are clustered to one side of the box
(knowing of course that there is no other difference between the red
and white marbles other than color)?
Clearly, the only logical assumption in such a case is that non-random
forces deliberately manipulated the marbles while the observer in
question wasn't looking. The basis for this conclusion is found in
the fact that the odds of this statistically determinable
non-homogenous non-random pattern being created by the application of
random energy is very close to impossible.
William is confused by thinking that such a non-homogenous non-random
pattern is a mere subjective human notion of "order". He fails to
realize that this pattern is in fact mathematically calculable and
distinguishable as being "non-homogenous" or "non-random".
> But the *fact* is that each single distribution of marbles has the same
> probability, including those where all the red marbles are on one side.
And that is the very quality that allows various "similar patterns" to
be distinguished on the basis of likelihood from other "similar
patterns". Different similar patterns do in fact carry with them real
and mathematically absolute distinguishing features that can and are
often recognized visually and intuitively by humans.
> But there are many more ways to distribute the marbles so as to get a
> 50:50 ratio (exactly). There are also many more ways to distribute the
> marbles so as to get a 49:51 ratio, but fewer ways than the 50:50 ratio.
Exponentially fewer in fact. That is what makes those patterns
contained by the 49:51 ratio demonstrably distinguishable,
mathematically, from those patterns contained by the 50:50 ratio.
Various patterns at different levels of homogeny or randomness do
carry with them different statistical values.
> That is what a bell-shaped curve looks like. In the case of high N,
> the curve is very narrow. In the case of low N, the curve is broader.
> But each single distribution has the same probability.
Again, this is the whole basis of my position. I'm so glad you agree
even though I am sure you will try desperately to see a way out of
admitting your agreement.
> > Please then, explain this to William who is still
> > struggling with understanding this concept.
>
> So do you. Mistaking the different probabilities of different
> distributions along a bell-shaped curve as some sort of evidence of
> entropy is nonsense.
It is not nonsense at all since entropy follows the same bell-shaped
curve as a system heads toward "maximum entropy" and "maximum
homogeny" and "maximum randomness". These "maximums" are calculable
and the resulting numbers form such a bell-shaped curve. There is no
difference whatsoever. Molecules work just like marbles in their
relation to a random source of energy. It is just that they are
smaller and generally thought of as more numerous. But, they do not
operate in a significantly different way from marbles when exposed to
a source of random energy.
> Thinking this has something to do with life is
> even worse.
As far as I know, I've only talked about the ability to detect
intelligent design by appreciating certain patterns in certain
situations.
> Failing to understand that the probability of any single
> fully specified distribution is the same as any others is *your*
> problem, not William's.
I've never said that single fully specified distributions were any
different from any other such fully specified distribution. What I
said was that certain distributions are far more likely than other
distributions since some distributions contain have far far far more
possible arrangements than others. You seem to recognize this as a
fact. William does not.
William still thinks that just because a single specified pattern is
just as likely as any other such specified pattern than all
non-specified patterns are equally likely. Therefore, William assumes
that no pattern can be distinguished from any other pattern of
non-specified red and white marbles. He uses this as a basis to say
that the finding of all read marbles on one side of the box is not any
different from finding a homogenous mixture of read and white marbles
throughout the box. This is an erroneous conclusion, as you very well
know.
> > > Yet you are trying to act as if this were a universal case.
> >
> > Where did you get this impression? I never said that this was a
> > universal case at all. Different systems behave very differently in a
> > random energy environment as I have previously described to you. What
> > I am saying is that given very specific knowledge about the potential
> > behavior of a particular system in a particular environment it is
> > possible to detect the activity of high-level informational complexity
> > and even intelligent design with a great degree of statistical
> > significance.
>
> And by pointing out that this is a special case, I am denying that one
> can do so in the other cases, where perceived *order* occurs as a
> consequence of energy input.
But, by saying this you are in fact admitting that in this specific
case of red and white marbles, that I am correct. Deliberate design
can be clearly detected and mathematically supported in this
particular situation.
> Those are the cases where the energy input
> interacts with the property being examined. And living things are
> notorious for extracting energy to create perceived order. In fact,
> that capacity to extract energy from its environment to create more of
> its complicated self is one of the defining characteristics of "life".
That's correct, but this ability is not limited to living things, as
you yourself have already pointed out. There are various levels of
informational complexity that can transform random energy into
directed energy. This ability is found on a continuum from those
abilities requiring very little informational input to those requiring
a great deal of informational input.
> > As I first suggested to William, the finding of all the red marbles on
> > one side of the box, after one knows they had reached a homogenous
> > state, is very good evidence of intelligent design.
>
> *Random* state. Not homogenous. Can you at least understand that
> distinction?
Can you explain it? What is the actual difference from a homogenous
molecular mixture vs. a random molecular mixture?
Really Howard, how does this distinction matter to the correctness of
my position? Let's say it again using your word "random". The
finding of all the red marbles on one side of the box, after one knows
they have reached a random state (maximum level of randomness), is
very good evidence of intelligent design.
There, does that help?
> > This is as good a
> > fact as you will ever come across in life. It carries with it
> > extremely high predictive value, given that the number of marbles in
> > the box is more than a thousand or so as I suggested. Anyone can try
> > this experiment and see for themselves. It is based on very good
> > science and predictive value that will work for anyone and everyone.
>
> And, as I point out, it is entirely irrelevant when applied to life.
Stop jumping the gun Howard and answer the question about red and
white marbles for now. Do you agree that in the case of red and white
marbles, as I have described it, that the ability to detect deliberate
manipulation is in fact extremely good? Yes or No? That is the only
question on the table at this point. Don't try and rush ahead of the
game. We'll get there, but you must answer this question first.
Dan Wood
"Zachriel" <"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@staff.texas.net> wrote
in message news:RO6dnXXFyMS...@adelphia.com...
pales by comparison. Leaving this A.M. to visit my daughter and
grandson, 8lbs 8oz.. Be back soon!
Dan Wood
>
Sean Pitman
> > As you probably know, I've used this very same reference myself in
> > this forum. As far as thermodynamic entropy is concerned, you, and
> > the author of this reference, are technically correct. All the
> > possible arrangements of colored marbles have the same thermodynamic
> > entropy. However, the colored marbles behave in very much the same way
> > as molecules of gas in a chamber that has random energy applied to it.
> > That is why I used marbles as an illustration of thermodynamic
> > entropy since marbles are easier to visualize and do experiments with.
>
> As an only illustration, sure. We must always keep in mind that analogies
> are always imperfect.
This one is perfect because there really are no fundamental
differences - as I will illustrate in greater detail below.
<snip>
> > This is a statistically determined likelihood for both the box of gas
> > molecules and the box of marbles. But the gas molecules are all the
> > same - right?
>
> Not necessarily. Only if they are the exact same molecule at the exact same
> temperature.
I'm talking about physical similarities and differences, not
differences in energy. But, if you want to get into Maxwell's demon .
. . (more on that below).
> > There is not difference in "color" as there are with
> > the red and white marbles. This can be easily solved by giving half
> > of the molecules a different isotope for one of their atoms, or even
> > by using different colors of gas molecules that do not chemically
> > combine or interact. Now, you have your two different "colors" of gas
> > molecules. How do you think they will behave differently from our
> > different colored marbles?
>
> Well you are trying to compare trillions of elastic molecules with hundreds
> of inelastic marbles. You are heading for trouble. Let's wait and see.
Marbles are not any more inelastic than many molecules are. They
behave in very much the same way. In any case, the degree of
elasticity has nothing to do with how the constituents of a system
arrange themselves when exposed to random energy.
<snip>
> > The only way left to create non-homogeny is by applying directed
> > non-random energy to such systems.
>
> Now this is a huge leap and shows why your analogy is so misleading.
Not at all. Both molecules of the same type (except for being
enatiomers of each other) and marbles of the same type (except for
being red and white) will in fact respond to random energy in exactly
the same way. There is no difference whatsoever. In fact, if you put
all the marbles in Box A and had a fan between Box A and Box B, random
energy applied to the system of marbles would in fact turn the fan in
one direction until maximum homogeny or randomness was reached by the
system. In other words, you can get "useful work" from a system of
marbles moving from a non-homogenous state to a homogenous state just
like you can with a system of molecules. There is no difference.
There really isn't.
> There
> is no sorting of marbles by color because you have carefully defined a
> difference without a difference.
Exactly the same thing can be done with molecules and the same thing
will happen. For molecules this is called a change in entropy even
though the volume and temperature of the system remain exactly the
same. Look it up.
> Therefore any shaking of the box of marbles
> will tend to mix the red and white ones.
Notice that the type of "mixing" involved here is exactly the same
type that happens in the molecular world. The mixing heads toward a
state of maximum "homogeny" or "randomness" or "entropy". In fact, a
state of maximum entropy is nothing more than a state of maximum
randomness or homogeny. They are in fact the same.
> For instance, if you defined
> marbles of different sizes, then shaking a box would tend to segregate them.
Actually, this would not happen if the marbles of different sizes
where shaken with enough random energy. The only time this sort of
sorting would happen is if the energy applied was not enough to get
the larger marbles with more inertia to distribute evenly throughout
the box. Without enough energy, the larger molecules would tend to
leave the "gaseous state" and aggregate toward the bottom of the box
in a "liquid" or "solid" state. In the mean time, the smaller
molecules, needed less energy to be in the "gaseous state" will
continue to occupy the entire free area of the box since the available
random energy would still be enough to keep them in their "gaseous
state".
This is why various levels of random energy can be used to separate
different types of molecules. Distillation is one of the ways that
this property can be used. Different molecules will enter the gaseous
state at different temperatures. Though not always true, larger
"heavier" molecules tend to require greater temperatures/level of
random energy to achieve such a gaseous state than do smaller
molecules for the very same reason as the case of larger vs. smaller
marbles. However, at high enough temperatures, both the small and
large molecules in a container will both be in the gaseous state and
will both be evenly mixed throughout the container. The same is true
of large and small marbles. Instantly remove the random energy from a
system in such a state and the molecules and marbles will both
collapse to the bottom of the container in a very homogenous/random
state. Try this experiment out yourself and see if it is not so.
> In addition, you have compared a non-elastic marble with an elastic
> molecule, and then jump to the erroneous conclusion that this means that gas
> molecules work the same way in all respects.
A atom or even most molecules are not more "elastic" than a marble.
Since everything is made of atoms and/or molecules they all carry the
same elastic or inelastic qualities of that from which they are made.
In any case, elasticity has nothing at all to do with the
homogenous/randomness of arrangements of molecules or marbles.
> When you heat gas in a chamber, it does not lead to homogeneity, rather it
> causes motion in the gas caused by differential pressure. This motion can be
> very turbulent under certain conditions, but in all cases, there are
> differences in pressure between the molecules near the source of heat and
> those away from the source of heat. In fact, some of the molecules are
> moving faster than others--they are hotter.
The overall arrangement of the molecules in a system at maximum
entropy with a given amount of random energy is in fact "homogenous"
or at a state of "maximum randomness". Certainly a focal application
of increased random energy to such a system at maximum entropy will
create a focal increase in motion that drops the overall entropy of
the system below maximum. But, the homogeny or randomness of the mix
of molecules themselves will not change. The focal application of
extra random energy to the system will affect all the molecules that
it comes in contact with in the same way, not differentiating them as
far as their pre-established random arrangement is concerned.
Lowering the heat may do this (as described above), but raising the
heat, even focally, will not do this.
> In addition, you have carefully decided on gas to represent your point, but
> liquids should work in principle just as well.
Liquids would also work in the same way, though not so rapidly as a
gas . . .
> But the same problem applies.
What "problems"?
> When we heat a liquid it can cause turbulent motion. Some of the "marbles"
> are moving faster than other marbles. Let's paint the fast moving "marbles"
> red, and leave the slow moving "marbles" blue.
If you could demonstrate this you would have overcome "Maxwell's
demon". In such a scenario you would have enough *information* to
again separate the molecules based just on their energy level.
Maxwell's demon is based on the idea of having a demon in charge of a
door separating two sides of a box of gas molecules. Every time the
demon sees a molecule moving significantly faster than the other
molecules, he lets that molecule through the door, but closes the door
when slower moving molecules try to go through. You can see how this
whole notion is starting to sound like it has quite a bit to do with
"information theory". Entropy is in fact an interesting part of and
probably even fundamental to information theory. You can read briefly
about the problems of this notion at the following link or many other
places online.
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/m/ma/maxwell_s_demon.html
> In other words, let's say we
> color our "marbles" to indicate the differences, rather than to camouflage
> it. What would it look like? Maybe something like this:
> http://www.llnl.gov/director/ar128045/110values.html
Again, you need to explain how to remember various changes in color
based not on pre-established color or feature differences, but upon
ever changing levels of energy. You need to explain how to overcome
the problem of Maxwell's demon.
> Anyway, if you heat a pot of water to boiling, anyone can see that the
> liquid is not homogeneous. It is turbulent. Some of the water forms bubbles
> of steam. These bubbles move violently through the liquid, force their way
> through the surface tension where the liquid meets the air and explodes into
> the atmosphere forming eddies of steam. Anything but homogeneous.
The same thing would happen to a large bucked of red and white
marbles. Add enough focal energy to it and it would look like it was
"boiling" with some marbles having much more energy than other
marbles. However, they would still be homogeneously mixed as far as
red and white marbles are concerned since the focal source of energy
would affect both colors of molecules equally. The same thing would
happen with water molecules if you made have of them some sort of tag,
like an isotopic difference or, with other types of molecules, an
enatiomeric difference. Boiling such mixtures would not change the
homogenous or random nature of the mixture.
> > > Please withdraw your erroneous argument.
> >
> > Would you like to reconsider?
>
> <requoted>
How about now?
> > The
> > only way left to create non-homogeny is by applying directed
> > non-random energy to such systems.
>
> This is absolutely false, as we have seen by many real-world examples that
> anyone can directly observe.
You haven't showed a single example of "such" systems as I have
specifically described going toward non-homogeny or non-randomness
when random energy (heat) is applied. You are stuck admitting that
red and white marbles simply do not go significantly below maximum
randomness when a state of maximum randomness/homogeny/entropy has
already been achieved. Beyond this, you have not explained how
molecules are fundamentally different, in this regard, from marbles.
> (Of course, who knows what you really mean by "directed non-random energy".
> I did a Google search, and I could not find where you have actually defined
> what you mean by this phrase. If you consider applying heat to be directed
> and non-random energy, then nothing probably qualifies as such. Presumably,
> you mean intelligently directed.)
Try looking up the definition of "heat" and you will find that "heat",
by definition, is random energy. Non-random energy is able to act in
non-random ways. Perhaps by reading about random energy (heat) you
will be able to understand what non-random energy is. I have
described this sort of energy several times in this very thread and
posts to which you yourself have responded, but don't take my word for
it. Look it up yourself.
Robert Parson
> Dan Wood <Wo...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > You cannot get away from the macro. The 2nd law was
> > origionally devised by N. Carnot in in order to understand
> > and improve efficiency of steam engines.
> > The 2/nd law was first conceived as a real world engineering
> > tool.
>
> Since Carnot worked a good generation before Clausius -- who, according
> to my physical chemistry textbook, introduced entropy in 1865 -- this
> can't be true.
>
> This website:
> http://www.wolframscience.com/reference/notes/1019b
> Has Clausius and Kelvin coming up with the 1st and 2nd laws "around
> 1850," but that's probably poor language (or 1865 is around 1850, I
> don't know).
No, it's correct - the 2nd Law was discovered a number of years
before the concept of "entropy" was formulated. The original
statements of the 2nd Law are operational in character (e.g. "Heat
will never flow spontaneously from a low temperature to a higher one",
or "You can't make cyclic engines that convert heat to work while
operating at a single temperature.") Clausius later introduced the
entropy concept in order to put the laws of thermo into a more
abstract and mathematical form.
The credit for discovering the 2nd Law is variously ascribed to
Carnot, Kelvin and Clausius. I think it's fair to say that Carnot had
the basic concept figured out, but he expressed it in a way that is
hard to follow because he relied on the language of the old "caloric
fluid" theory of heat, and because he avoided using any but the
simplest mathematics in his presentation. As a result Carnot's work
was ignored for about 20 years, until Emile Clapeyron reformulated it
in more conventional scientific language. (The "Carnot cycle" pictures
that grace the pages of thermodynamics textbooks first appeared in
Clapeyron's paper.) Clausius and Kelvin then recast the
Carnot-Clapeyron analysis in a way consistent with the First Law, to
yield the 2nd Law as we know it today.
Robert Parson
> > two populations of non-homogenous gas molecules that are only
> > different from each other by being enatomers of each other. And yet,
> > if allowed to mix at a certain level of random energy/heat, they will
> > do so until they reach their maximum state of homogeny, which is also
> > their maximum state of entropy for that level of system energy. They
> > will not go the other direction, but will proceed steadily toward a
> > state of statistical homogeny.
>
> You are alluding to the Gibbs Paradox. Basically, we have a container
> divided by a door. On one side is gas A, and on the other gas B. When
> happens when we remove the door? Well, it depends on whether gas A molecules
> have a great affinity for other A molecules or B molecules. The process of
> mixing can therefore be either endothermic or exothermic. If the gases are
> indistinguishable in this manner, then there is no change in energy. The
> mixing is merely statistical and irrelevant to thermodynamics (work), much
> like shaking a box of marbles which are identical except for the irrelevancy
> of color.
Umn no. You are confusing enthalpy of mixing with free energy of
mixing here. It is true that the mixing of two fluids can be either
exothermic or endothermic (corresponding to a negative or a positive
enthalpy of mixing), and that this depends upon the comparative
affinities of the two types of molecules for themselves or for each
other. But this has nothing to do with the Gibbs Paradox, which is
entirely entropic in nature and which occurs even for ideal, wholly
noninteracting gases. (Basically, the two halves of your paragraph are
independently correct, but they don't really relate to each other.)
Suppose we have a bulb of Helium and a bulb of Neon, at the same
temperature and pressure, separated by a stopcock. We may assume that
the pressure is low enough so that both gases may be treated as ideal
(negligible interactions, aside from the elastic collisions required
to maintain thermal equilibrium.) We open the stopcock and let the
gases mix. The entropy of the system increases by a fixed amount
depending only on the final concentrations of the two components in
the mixture (if we have equal amounts of He and Ne, the final entropy
of mixing is R Ln(2) per mole where R is the gas constant.) The
positive entropy of mixing implies a negative free energy of mixing (-
RT Ln 2 for the equimolar case). This free energy can, in principle,
be used to perform mechanical work. Turning the argument around, the
magnitude of the free energy of mixing represents the minimum amount
of work that must be expended in order separate the mixture into pure
components.
The "Gibbs paradox" arises when one tries to apply this same reasoning
to a mixture of two identical gases. Clearly it is not possible to
obtain work by mixing Helium with Helium, so we are required to make a
distinction between the way we treat truly identical and "almost
identical" (e.g. isotopes, different nuclear spin states, etc.)
particles. It's not really a paradox, it's just a fact of life -
nature really does provide us with particles that are absolutely
identical.
Robert Parson
> You can do the same thing with a mixture of oil and water. Add enough
> random energy to a bottle of oil and water and these molecules can be
> made to mix in a homogenous manner. As long as this level of random
> energy is maintained by this system, the oil and water molecules will
> remain homogeneously mixed. However, allow some of the random energy
> to leave this system and the oil and water will separate, leaving
> their previously homogenous state.
Nature is a lot more complicated than this. Instead of oil and water,
consider a mixture of triethylamine and water. At low temperatures
these two compounds are soluble, at high temperatures they are
insoluble. If you start with a 50-50 mixture of water and
triethylamine at a temperature of 18 C, and raise the temperature by
about 2 degrees C, it will spontaneously separate into two layers, one
of which add some "random energy" room temperature, and raise the
temperature by a couple of degrees (i.e., add "random energy" to the
system) it will spontaneously separate into two phases, one of which
is mostly water and the other mostly trieth. As you increase the
temperature further each phase gets more concentrated in the majority
component. So in this case adding "random energy" causes the system to
*unmix* - and the more random energy you add, the the more purified
each phase becomes.
If you try the same trick with nicotine and water, you find that the
phases separate at about 61 degrees C, and then mix again above 210 C.
None of this violates the laws of thermodynamics, of course. In every
case the system adopts a configuration that minimizes its free energy
- or, less conveniently but equivalently, maximizes the net entropy of
the system together with its surroundings.) It's just that the
intuitive connection between entropy and commonsense notions of
"disorder", which works reasonably well for ideal gases and a few
other textbook paradigms, fails rather drastically for strongly
interacting solutions.
Sean Pitman
> Sean, if the marbles have different color, or any other physical difference,
> then there exists a physical process that can sort them without intelligent
> help. The only process you have imagined is shaking, but that is not the
> only possible process.
You've gotta look at what is most likely given the scenario as
presented. Trying to come up with potential mindless processes that
could give rise to such an effect becomes an exercise in absurdity.
If you find a box of red and white marbles with the red marbles all on
one side of the box (knowing that they are identical marbles except
for color), it would be far more insane to propose that some source of
supper powerful blue light from some star caused the very
non-homogenous non-random pattern vs. an deliberate cause. Also
imagine finding the red marbles all clustered in a square in the
center of the box. How would you explain that sort of internally
symmetrical non-homogeny/non-randomness? Now, you would have to come
up with some perfectly arranged source of highly powerful perfectly
balanced blue light on all 6 sides of the box. Please . . . At some
point the evidence for deliberate design in such a situation should
overwhelm even the most hard headed.
> One poster has already pointed out to you that if the marbles are only
> exposed to red light, the difference disappears and all the marbles are red.
This is a lame argument because it basically says that if you can't
recognize the differences that there aren't any differences. Being
blind to the color differences between red and white marbles doesn't
change the fact that the red and white are still different and this
difference can be detected in any number of ways to include turning on
some white light. It also doesn't change the reality of their mixing
properties when exposed to random energy.
> Alternately, if the marbles were exposed to very high energy blue light, the
> red marbles might receive enough kinetic energy to move out of the white
> ones.
That is true. But, where are you going to get such high-energy light
in your bedroom? Do you really think such an explanation more likely
than deliberate design in such a situation? Come on now. If all
low-level informational processes can be reasonable ruled out to a
significant degree of reliability, what do you have left besides
deliberate design? Oh, well, since deliberate design is never an
option in such cases, you would just look for a mindless cause until
the cows came home? How can you be so blind?
> You are overconstraining your hypothetical situation in a way that does not
> correspond to real-worl physics or chemistry.
This is ridiculous. Such real-world constraints are used all the time
in physics and chemistry. Have you even taken a class of
college-level physics or chemistry? Who would have ever thought that
a collection of red and white marbles in a box was "too constrained"
to be relevant to anything in physics or chemistry? That's just nuts.
Marbles and their abilities or inabilities to interact in certain
ways with their surrounding environments are just as much part of
physics as anything else is, to include atoms and especially
molecules. They also say a great deal about how chemistry works as
well.
puppe...@hotmail.com
tutorials when I was teaching this stuff. You would have been so
easy to mark. You'd have gotten straight zeros.
Socks
Sean Pitman
The whole playing card argument is fallacious in that it is basically
the same thing as saying that no useful work can be obtained from a
non-random mixture of anything, especially in the macro world. This
is clearly mistaken. The reason why useful work can be obtained from
a non-homogenous mixture of molecules in a gaseous state is because
the random energy of these molecules is not exactly random. This
non-random nature of these molecules causes their average movements
over time to have directional preference. This preference is what
turns the paddle wheel or whatever else is used to extract "useful
work" from a system that is heading toward maximum homogeny or
randomness.
What is interesting is that most people think of such systems working
only on the molecular or atomic scale. This is simply mistaken.
Exactly the same thing can be shown to work on the macro scale. Put a
bunch of marbles on one side of a box with a fan in the middle
(protected on one side from interaction with the marbles). As the box
is shaken, the fan will move in one direction most of the time until
maximum homogeny is reached and an equal number of marbles are hitting
the fan blades from all directions over a given span of time. The
marbles in the box have now reached maximum entropy for a given level
of random energy. No more "useful work" can be extracted from the
random energy of the marbles in the box. The very same thing can be
said for a "neat" vs. a "messy" room. A neat room, if shaken
randomly, will most likely produce much more useful work than a messy
room in which the stuff in the room is more randomly distributed. The
very same thing happens in the molecular world.
Do you know that "useful work" can be obtained from cooling off a hot
container of molecules or by heating up this very same system once it
is cooled (in a gravity field that is)? It is the change in balance
that enables useful work to be obtained from a system independent upon
weather random energy is coming or going. However, at a constant
level of random energy, every system has a particular "maximum"
entropy. At that maximum, all the constituents of that system are at
their maximum level of random or homogenous distribution. They do not
leave that maximum or else the fan would start spinning again and, as
we all know from experience, this just never happens.
The fact is that even if no "useful work" can be taken out of a
molecular system, such as one in which two molecular enatiomers are
allowed to mix with each other at constant temperature, pressure, and
volume, the system as a whole is said to have undergone an increase in
entropy to arrive at a new "maximum" entropy for the homogenized
mixtures of these two molecules. The very same thing can be used to
describe a homogenous mixture of playing cards, which can be
statistically differentiated from a non-homogenous non-random mixture.
Also, entropy really has nothing to do with the "burning" of any of
the molecules of a system to release the energy from their molecular
bonds. At least a certain aspect of entropy is about obtaining
"useful work" based on a detectable difference in how random energy is
reacting with the intact non-burnt parts of a system. Burning
flammable molecules in different states of mixing or non-mixing would
tell us nothing about their level of entropy. The same heat would be
released regardless of how the molecules were arranged in the system.
Therefore, contrary to Zach's most interesting assertion, burning says
nothing about different levels of entropy - even when it comes to
playing cards.
Sean Pitman
> divided by a door. On one side is gas A, and on the other gas B. When
> happens when we remove the door? Well, it depends on whether gas A molecules
> have a great affinity for other A molecules or B molecules. The process of
> mixing can therefore be either endothermic or exothermic. If the gases are
> indistinguishable in this manner, then there is no change in energy. The
> mixing is merely statistical and irrelevant to thermodynamics (work), much
> like shaking a box of marbles which are identical except for the irrelevancy
> of color.
The problem is that the mixing of identical gases or even enatiomeric
gases is not irrelevant to thermodynamics at all. Entropy is in fact
said to increase slightly with the removal of the partition. The
process of the mixing is not reversible. The following links should
help muddy the waters for you just a bit more:
http://www.maxwellian.demon.co.uk/art/lnG/Gibbs1.html
http://www.chem.arizona.edu/~salzmanr/480a/480ants/mixing/mixing.html
Mike Goodrich
> >
> > Howard Hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote in message news:<4101AFFC...@indiana.edu>...
> >
> > <snip>
> > > > That is why a non-random energy source is clearly discernable
> > > > whenever one sees that the red marbles/molecules are all on one side
> > > > of the box. Do the experiment yourself to test this hypothesis of
> > > > mine and see if it does not carry with it a very high degree of
> > > > predictive value.
> > >
> > > Again, this is a special case where the non-random energy sources chosen
> > > cannot discriminate or differentially affect the color property.
> >
> > So, you agree that in such a special case as I have described, I am
> > actually correct?
>
> No, because you are repeatedly confounding entropy with the
> take a simple case of a box with 4 marbles, 2 red and 2 blue and mark
> the marbles with numbers, so that we have R1, R2, etc. Then we will
> shake the box so that the marbles wind up *randomly* distributed. Not
> one way that the marbles can land with both red marbles to the left and
> marbles can land with both red marbles to the right and both blue
> marbles to the left, and only one way to have all 4 marbles to the
> (leaving R2 and B2 to the right). But one can also have R2 and B2 to
> the left; R1 and B2; and R2 and B1. That is, there are 4 different ways
> different ways to have 3 marbles (two red and one blue) on one side and
> we can distinguish between these two possibilities. And *each* one of
> these arrangements has an identical probability. But when we cannot
> identify each individual marble, we will see *more* cases -- 4 -- where
> there are one red and one blue on each side than cases where both
> marbles on one side are the same color - 1 for those cases where we see
> two marbles on a side. That *is* what you expect from a *random* distribution.
>
> distribution, with the *mean* (and median and mode in this case) number
> of marbles on each side is a 50:50 distribution and the *mean*
> ever *exactly* a 50:50 ratio of either number or color. The standard
> in the simple example above, *if* one could number the marbles, the
> probability of any *single* specified distribution, including the
> extreme of all one color on one side, is the same as the probability of
> on one side only appears once, whereas there are many different ways to
> form a distribution of exactly 50:50 red:blue. That is in the nature of
> a bell-shaped curve.
>
> probability, including those where all the red marbles are on one side.
> 50:50 ratio (exactly). There are also many more ways to distribute the
> marbles so as to get a 49:51 ratio, but fewer ways than the 50:50 ratio.
> the curve is very narrow. In the case of low N, the curve is broader.
> But each single distribution has the same probability.
>
> > struggling with understanding this concept.
>
> So do you. Mistaking the different probabilities of different
> distributions along a bell-shaped curve as some sort of evidence of
> even worse. Failing to understand that the probability of any single
> fully specified distribution is the same as any others is *your*
> problem, not William's.
>
> >
> > Where did you get this impression? I never said that this was a
> > universal case at all. Different systems behave very differently in a
> > random energy environment as I have previously described to you. What
> > I am saying is that given very specific knowledge about the potential
> > behavior of a particular system in a particular environment it is
> > possible to detect the activity of high-level informational complexity
> > and even intelligent design with a great degree of statistical
> > significance.
>
> And by pointing out that this is a special case, I am denying that one
> can do so in the other cases, where perceived *order* occurs as a
> interacts with the property being examined. And living things are
> notorious for extracting energy to create perceived order. In fact,
> that capacity to extract energy from its environment to create more of
> its complicated self is one of the defining characteristics of "life".
> >
> > one side of the box, after one knows they had reached a homogenous
> > state, is very good evidence of intelligent design.
>
> *Random* state. Not homogenous. Can you at least understand that
> distinction?
>
> > fact as you will ever come across in life. It carries with it
> > extremely high predictive value, given that the number of marbles in
> > the box is more than a thousand or so as I suggested. Anyone can try
> > this experiment and see for themselves. It is based on very good
> > science and predictive value that will work for anyone and everyone.
>
> And, as I point out, it is entirely irrelevant when applied to life.
> >
> > www.DetectingDesign.com
Nope, Pitman is correct, as entropy is the degeneracy of microstates
giving the same macrostate.
Here the microstates are the configurations of marbles giving the same
color *pattern*.
It seems thath Hershey is the one confused about entropy and has
attempted to move the goalposts, but let us consider Pitman's original
problem:
If you were to consider an NxN grid of positions (like a square
Chinese checkerboard) such that each grid position was occupied by a
marble after shaking, you would find - as far as all colors ending up
on one half of the grid - that the odds of that pattern are:
{4 x {[(N^2)/2]!}^2} / (N^2)!
The function of N in the numerator is the total degeneracy of states
for the marbles of one color to occupy all the sites on one 'side' of
the grid. The denominator is the total number of all marble
configurations.
The factor of 4 is a symmetry factor where I have allowed for either
side and also top and bottom 'sides'.
Thus for 4 marbles, 2 blue and 2 red, there is a 2/3 chance of lining
up on one side, while for a 3x3 (9 marbles) it is only 3x10^(-4). The
function decreases very rapidly from there and is down to about
10^(-30) for a 10x10.
The odds of the *pattern* is the entropy of the pattern divided by the
total number of possible states.
The fact is that the number of possible configurations to give the
same *pattern* (macrostate) of color distribution scales as the
entropy of that pattern which is the specification of the macrostate.
Note the relationship between *pattern*, entropy, and specification.
Having specific (discrete) sites simplifies the problem, and actually
makes the odds more favorable for the pattern. In a system where the
sites were no longer discrete, the odds would obviously be (much)
less.
Zachriel
> "Zachriel" <"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@staff.texas.net> wrote
in message news:<DqCdnc3rbLH...@adelphia.com>...
>
> > You are alluding to the Gibbs Paradox. Basically, we have a container
> > divided by a door. On one side is gas A, and on the other gas B. When
> > happens when we remove the door? Well, it depends on whether gas A
molecules
> > have a great affinity for other A molecules or B molecules. The process
of
> > mixing can therefore be either endothermic or exothermic. If the gases
are
> > indistinguishable in this manner, then there is no change in energy. The
> > mixing is merely statistical and irrelevant to thermodynamics (work),
much
> > like shaking a box of marbles which are identical except for the
irrelevancy
> > of color.
>
> The problem is that the mixing of identical gases or even enatiomeric
> gases is not irrelevant to thermodynamics at all. Entropy is in fact
> said to increase slightly with the removal of the partition. The
> process of the mixing is not reversible. The following links should
> help muddy the waters for you just a bit more:
Mixing two identical gases does not change the entropy.
>
> http://www.maxwellian.demon.co.uk/art/lnG/Gibbs1.html
From your link: "The problem in Gibbs' paradox arises due to the
indistinguishability of the particles."
> http://www.chem.arizona.edu/~salzmanr/480a/480ants/mixing/mixing.html
This link refers to different gases.
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>
Zachriel
"Robert Parson" <rpar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:82683456.04072...@posting.google.com...
It wouldn't be the first time I have been wrong.
> You are confusing enthalpy of mixing with free energy of
> mixing here. It is true that the mixing of two fluids can be either
> exothermic or endothermic (corresponding to a negative or a positive
> enthalpy of mixing), and that this depends upon the comparative
> affinities of the two types of molecules for themselves or for each
> other. But this has nothing to do with the Gibbs Paradox, which is
> entirely entropic in nature and which occurs even for ideal, wholly
> noninteracting gases. (Basically, the two halves of your paragraph are
> independently correct, but they don't really relate to each other.)
Like most quantum discussions, everything revolves around the actual process
of measurement. The distinction between the molecules, in this particular
instance, was a measure of the affinity for one molecule for another. I
chose that property because of the intermediate value of zero change in
energy, when our chosen measurement is no longer capable of making a
distinction between the gases. However, other property distinctions can be
considered.
> Suppose we have a bulb of Helium and a bulb of Neon, at the same
> temperature and pressure, separated by a stopcock. We may assume that
> the pressure is low enough so that both gases may be treated as ideal
> (negligible interactions, aside from the elastic collisions required
> to maintain thermal equilibrium.) We open the stopcock and let the
> gases mix. The entropy of the system increases by a fixed amount
> depending only on the final concentrations of the two components in
> the mixture (if we have equal amounts of He and Ne, the final entropy
> of mixing is R Ln(2) per mole where R is the gas constant.) The
> positive entropy of mixing implies a negative free energy of mixing (-
> RT Ln 2 for the equimolar case). This free energy can, in principle,
> be used to perform mechanical work. Turning the argument around, the
> magnitude of the free energy of mixing represents the minimum amount
> of work that must be expdended in order separate the mixture into pure
> components.cf
The way you would tap the free energy depends on tapping into the property
distinction between the separate gases. If there is no property that can be
used to distinguish between the gases, then there is no difference and no
free energy.
> The "Gibbs paradox" arises when one tries to apply this same reasoning
> to a mixture of two identical gases. Clearly it is not possible to
> obtain work by mixing Helium with Helium, so we are required to make a
> distinction between the way we treat truly identical and "almost
> identical" (e.g. isotopes, different nuclear spin states, etc.)
> particles. It's not really a paradox, it's just a fact of life -
> nature really does provide us with particles that are absolutely
> identical.
Quite right. Science observes that all helium-4 is identical. Mixing two
containers of helium does not change their entropy. That's because the
helium isn't just similar, but exactly identical and cannot be distinguished
by any means.
However, if one day we found a way to distinguish between helium from
Jupiter and helium from Saturn, then mixing them would indeed result in a
change in entropy, and we could use our newfound knowledge to devise a
mechanism that could, in principle, tap into the free energy.
Zachriel
> "Zachriel"
<"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv3.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote in
message news:<oe6dnTECcKb...@adelphia.com>...
>
> > > As you probably know, I've used this very same reference myself in
> > > this forum. As far as thermodynamic entropy is concerned, you, and
> > > the author of this reference, are technically correct. All the
> > > possible arrangements of colored marbles have the same thermodynamic
> > > entropy. However, the colored marbles behave in very much the same way
> > > as molecules of gas in a chamber that has random energy applied to it.
> > > That is why I used marbles as an illustration of thermodynamic
> > > entropy since marbles are easier to visualize and do experiments with.
> >
> > As an only illustration, sure. We must always keep in mind that
analogies
> > are always imperfect.
>
> This one is perfect because there really are no fundamental
> differences - as I will illustrate in greater detail below.
You might have missed out on Quantum Mechanics, early 20th century. Atoms
are not like marbles.
<snip>
> The only time this sort of
> sorting would happen is if the energy applied was not enough to get
> the larger marbles with more inertia to distribute evenly throughout
> the box.
That's most of the real world. The Sun hits the surface of a lake and steam
forms. NOT homogeneous. I heat a pot of soup, and while stirring I notice
that there is a thickening along the bottom. NOT homogeneous.
> Without enough energy, the larger molecules would tend to
> leave the "gaseous state" and aggregate toward the bottom of the box
> in a "liquid" or "solid" state. In the mean time, the smaller
> molecules, needed less energy to be in the "gaseous state" will
> continue to occupy the entire free area of the box since the available
> random energy would still be enough to keep them in their "gaseous
> state".
Just like my soup on the stove, steam forms on the lid and condenses as
purified water. Amazing. The "marbles" separate when heated.
> This is why various levels of random energy can be used to separate
> different types of molecules. Distillation is one of the ways that
> this property can be used. Different molecules will enter the gaseous
> state at different temperatures.
Right. So we see order from random energy.
> Though not always true, larger
> "heavier" molecules tend to require greater temperatures/level of
> random energy to achieve such a gaseous state than do smaller
> molecules for the very same reason as the case of larger vs. smaller
> marbles. However, at high enough temperatures, both the small and
> large molecules in a container will both be in the gaseous state and
> will both be evenly mixed throughout the container. The same is true
> of large and small marbles.
Yes, if the Sun goes supernova our lake will vaporize. Meanwhile, a gentle
breeze makes ripples across the surface of the lake. Order from nothing more
than the heat of the Sun.
> Instantly remove the random energy from a
> system in such a state and the molecules and marbles will both
> collapse to the bottom of the container in a very homogenous/random
> state. Try this experiment out yourself and see if it is not so.
Sorry. It didn't work out that way. I vaporized an alcohol and water
mixture, then subjected it to rapid cooling. The alcohol came out first so I
collected it in a bottle. Thanks for the tip, though.
I also turned the heat off the stove, but the soup was still pretty thick on
the bottom, and the pot lid was still wet.
<snip>
>
> > When we heat a liquid it can cause turbulent motion. Some of the
"marbles"
> > are moving faster than other marbles. Let's paint the fast moving
"marbles"
> > red, and leave the slow moving "marbles" blue.
>
> If you could demonstrate this you would have overcome "Maxwell's
> demon".
<snip>
Um, it's called infrared photography. You might also want to study cooking.
There's a lot of non-homogeneous results that come from simple heating.
You are also confused about "Maxwell's Demon". We can easily distinguish hot
and cold. We just can't get something from nothing. Read your own link
below.
"Real-life versions of Maxwellian demons (with their entropy lowering
effects of course duly balanced by increase of entropy elsewhere) actually
occur in living systems, such as the ion channels and pumps that make our
nervous systems work, including our minds. Molecular-sized mechanisms are no
longer found only in biology however, it's also the subject of the emerging
field of nanotechnology."
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/m/ma/maxwell_s_demon.html
R. Baldwin
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
> danarchy6LESPAM_CEST@INTERDIT!!yahoo.com (Dan Ensign) wrote in message
news:<1ghgbox.1v631j81q34fpoN%danarchy6LESPAM_CEST@INTERDIT!!yahoo.com>...
>
> The whole playing card argument is fallacious in that it is basically
> the same thing as saying that no useful work can be obtained from a
> non-random mixture of anything, especially in the macro world. This
> is clearly mistaken. The reason why useful work can be obtained from
> a non-homogenous mixture of molecules in a gaseous state is because
> the random energy of these molecules is not exactly random. This
> non-random nature of these molecules causes their average movements
> over time to have directional preference. This preference is what
> turns the paddle wheel or whatever else is used to extract "useful
> work" from a system that is heading toward maximum homogeny or
> randomness.
The playing card argument shows the fallacious nature of your argument about
marbles. If you can derive work from having marbles in a box divided by
their two colors, then there exists a physical process that can separate the
marbles by acting on the difference from which the potential energy stems.
There is no need for that process to involve intelligence.
>
> What is interesting is that most people think of such systems working
> only on the molecular or atomic scale. This is simply mistaken.
> Exactly the same thing can be shown to work on the macro scale. Put a
> bunch of marbles on one side of a box with a fan in the middle
> (protected on one side from interaction with the marbles). As the box
> is shaken, the fan will move in one direction most of the time until
> maximum homogeny is reached and an equal number of marbles are hitting
> the fan blades from all directions over a given span of time. The
> marbles in the box have now reached maximum entropy for a given level
> of random energy. No more "useful work" can be extracted from the
> random energy of the marbles in the box. The very same thing can be
> said for a "neat" vs. a "messy" room. A neat room, if shaken
> randomly, will most likely produce much more useful work than a messy
> room in which the stuff in the room is more randomly distributed. The
> very same thing happens in the molecular world.
You do understand that work means the integral of force over distance and
not effort, don't you? How is a neat room more capable of producing physical
work than a messy one?
>
> Do you know that "useful work" can be obtained from cooling off a hot
> container of molecules or by heating up this very same system once it
> is cooled (in a gravity field that is)? It is the change in balance
> that enables useful work to be obtained from a system independent upon
> weather random energy is coming or going. However, at a constant
> level of random energy, every system has a particular "maximum"
> entropy. At that maximum, all the constituents of that system are at
> their maximum level of random or homogenous distribution. They do not
> leave that maximum or else the fan would start spinning again and, as
> we all know from experience, this just never happens.
Thermal equilibrium is not the same thing as maximum entropy. You are
inventing terms for thermodynamics, which is a good way to confuse matters.
>
> The fact is that even if no "useful work" can be taken out of a
> molecular system, such as one in which two molecular enatiomers are
> allowed to mix with each other at constant temperature, pressure, and
> volume, the system as a whole is said to have undergone an increase in
> entropy to arrive at a new "maximum" entropy for the homogenized
> mixtures of these two molecules. The very same thing can be used to
> describe a homogenous mixture of playing cards, which can be
> statistically differentiated from a non-homogenous non-random mixture.
Baloney. The sorting of playing cards only matters in the mind of the
observer. Physics doesn't care whether the Jack comes before the Queen or
after the Ace.
========================================
Chez Watt!!??
>
> Also, entropy really has nothing to do with the "burning" of any of
> the molecules of a system to release the energy from their molecular
> bonds. At least a certain aspect of entropy is about obtaining
> "useful work" based on a detectable difference in how random energy is
> reacting with the intact non-burnt parts of a system. Burning
> flammable molecules in different states of mixing or non-mixing would
> tell us nothing about their level of entropy. The same heat would be
> released regardless of how the molecules were arranged in the system.
> Therefore, contrary to Zach's most interesting assertion, burning says
> nothing about different levels of entropy - even when it comes to
> playing cards.
=========================================
Are you truly that ignorant of chemical thermodynamics? How did you get
through college? After a redox reaction (burning), there is a change in
entropy between reactants and products. Look up the standard tables and the
back of your Chemistry text book.
R. Baldwin
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
news:<X9wMc.581$PK5...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>...
>
> > Sean, if the marbles have different color, or any other physical
difference,
> > then there exists a physical process that can sort them without
intelligent
> > help. The only process you have imagined is shaking, but that is not the
> > only possible process.
>
> You've gotta look at what is most likely given the scenario as
> presented. Trying to come up with potential mindless processes that
> could give rise to such an effect becomes an exercise in absurdity.
Fine. Why not present a scenario worth discussing?
>
> If you find a box of red and white marbles with the red marbles all on
> one side of the box (knowing that they are identical marbles except
> for color), it would be far more insane to propose that some source of
> supper powerful blue light from some star caused the very
> non-homogenous non-random pattern vs. an deliberate cause. Also
> imagine finding the red marbles all clustered in a square in the
> center of the box. How would you explain that sort of internally
> symmetrical non-homogeny/non-randomness? Now, you would have to come
> up with some perfectly arranged source of highly powerful perfectly
> balanced blue light on all 6 sides of the box. Please . . . At some
> point the evidence for deliberate design in such a situation should
> overwhelm even the most hard headed.
You still haven't corrected your flawed treatment of entropy. Thermodynamics
doesn't care whether you have an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of
marbles.
>
> > One poster has already pointed out to you that if the marbles are only
> > exposed to red light, the difference disappears and all the marbles are
red.
>
> This is a lame argument because it basically says that if you can't
> recognize the differences that there aren't any differences. Being
> blind to the color differences between red and white marbles doesn't
> change the fact that the red and white are still different and this
> difference can be detected in any number of ways to include turning on
> some white light. It also doesn't change the reality of their mixing
> properties when exposed to random energy.
That is exactly the point. If you can't recognize the differences, then
thermodynamically there aren't any.
>
> > Alternately, if the marbles were exposed to very high energy blue light,
the
> > red marbles might receive enough kinetic energy to move out of the white
> > ones.
>
> That is true. But, where are you going to get such high-energy light
> in your bedroom? Do you really think such an explanation more likely
> than deliberate design in such a situation? Come on now. If all
> low-level informational processes can be reasonable ruled out to a
> significant degree of reliability, what do you have left besides
> deliberate design? Oh, well, since deliberate design is never an
> option in such cases, you would just look for a mindless cause until
> the cows came home? How can you be so blind?
A blue star would be a good source of high-energy blue light. You would only
need to place the marbles in the vicinity.
Also, I did not rule out deliberate design. I am simply pointing out that
you cannot rule out plain old natural physics.
>
> > You are overconstraining your hypothetical situation in a way that does
not
> > correspond to real-worl physics or chemistry.
>
> This is ridiculous. Such real-world constraints are used all the time
> in physics and chemistry. Have you even taken a class of
> college-level physics or chemistry? Who would have ever thought that
> a collection of red and white marbles in a box was "too constrained"
> to be relevant to anything in physics or chemistry? That's just nuts.
> Marbles and their abilities or inabilities to interact in certain
> ways with their surrounding environments are just as much part of
> physics as anything else is, to include atoms and especially
> molecules. They also say a great deal about how chemistry works as
> well.
You overly constrain the problem by only considering one process (shaking)
that is not able to act on the difference between differently colored
marbles.
>
> Sean
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>
R. Dunno
>
> "Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
> news:80d0c26f.0407...@posting.google.com...
>> "Zachriel"
><"http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/"@serv3.gc.dca.giganews.com> wrote in
> message news:<oe6dnTECcKb...@adelphia.com>...
>>
>> > > As you probably know, I've used this very same reference myself in
>> > > this forum. As far as thermodynamic entropy is concerned, you, and
>> > > the author of this reference, are technically correct. All the
>> > > possible arrangements of colored marbles have the same thermodynamic
>> > > entropy. However, the colored marbles behave in very much the same way
>> > > as molecules of gas in a chamber that has random energy applied to it.
>> > > That is why I used marbles as an illustration of thermodynamic
>> > > entropy since marbles are easier to visualize and do experiments with.
>> >
>> > As an only illustration, sure. We must always keep in mind that
> analogies
>> > are always imperfect.
>>
>> This one is perfect because there really are no fundamental
>> differences - as I will illustrate in greater detail below.
>
> You might have missed out on Quantum Mechanics, early 20th century. Atoms
> are not like marbles.
>
He doesn't seem to get what a showstopper that is.
Mike Goodrich
The value of 3x10^(-4) is for a 4x4 not a 3x3.
Sean Pitman
> > You can do the same thing with a mixture of oil and water. Add enough
> > random energy to a bottle of oil and water and these molecules can be
> > made to mix in a homogenous manner. As long as this level of random
> > energy is maintained by this system, the oil and water molecules will
> > remain homogeneously mixed. However, allow some of the random energy
> > to leave this system and the oil and water will separate, leaving
> > their previously homogenous state.
>
> Nature is a lot more complicated than this.
Not when you are using oil and water . . .
Different molecules interact with each other differently, sometimes
very differently. All I was trying to point out to Zach is that many
objects in the "macro" world can be made to interact with each other
in a very similar way to those objects in the micro world. I was also
trying to point out to Zach that just because molecules or objects can
be made to separate be "sorted" at one temperature doesn't mean that
they can't be mixed at another temperature. The actual workings of
entropic systems and the ability to extract useful work from the
random energy applied to such systems is not monopolized by systems
composed of very small constituents like atoms and molecules. A box
of red and white marbles works in very much the same way when random
energy is applied as a box of molecules.
> Instead of oil and water, consider a mixture of triethylamine and water.
> At low temperatures these two compounds are soluble, at high
> temperatures they are insoluble. If you start with a 50-50 mixture of
> water and triethylamine at a temperature of 18 C, and raise the temperature
> by about 2 degrees C, it will spontaneously separate into two layers, one
> of which add some "random energy" room temperature, and raise the
> temperature by a couple of degrees (i.e., add "random energy" to the
> system) it will spontaneously separate into two phases, one of which
> is mostly water and the other mostly trieth. As you increase the
> temperature further each phase gets more concentrated in the majority
> component. So in this case adding "random energy" causes the system to
> *unmix* - and the more random energy you add, the the more purified
> each phase becomes.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that what happened here
is that the trieth starts requiring significantly more space than with
a certain level of heat energy. This causes a separation of trieth
from water at 130deg F. Unusual, but not all that surprising.
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech-Environ/DOWNSTREAM/presenta.htm
> If you try the same trick with nicotine and water, you find that the
> phases separate at about 61 degrees C, and then mix again above 210 C.
Again, this is interesting, but not at all surprising or limited to
the world of atoms and/or molecules.
> None of this violates the laws of thermodynamics, of course.
Of course not. Nothing violates the laws of thermodynamics and I
don't think anyone here is suggesting that these laws can be violated.
In fact, that's the whole point.
> In every
> case the system adopts a configuration that minimizes its free energy
> - or, less conveniently but equivalently, maximizes the net entropy of
> the system together with its surroundings.) It's just that the
> intuitive connection between entropy and commonsense notions of
> "disorder", which works reasonably well for ideal gases and a few
> other textbook paradigms, fails rather drastically for strongly
> interacting solutions.
We aren't talking about what many people think of as "order" or
"disorder", but about maximum homogeny or random distribution of
certain types of systems - like red and white marbles, molecular
enatiomers, etc. I presented a very specific situation to point out
what happens with the statistically measurable homogeny or randomness
of a system when this system is acted upon by a source of random
energy. If a system is not already there, it heads toward a state of
maximum homogeny or randomness when random energy is applied. This
type of change is not at all based on some human notion of "order" or
"disorder", but upon a real measurable difference. Such differences
can be used to very accurately assume the involvement of deliberate
activity as an explanation for the appearance of certain systems vs.
the appearance being the result of purely random energy.
Sean Pitman
Finally! Someone who actually gets it. Hopefully this helps to clear
things up for people following this thread. Thanks again Mike.
Sean Pitman
> The playing card argument shows the fallacious nature of your argument about
> marbles. If you can derive work from having marbles in a box divided by
> their two colors, then there exists a physical process that can separate the
> marbles by acting on the difference from which the potential energy stems.
> There is no need for that process to involve intelligence.
There is if you aren't by some very powerful source of blue light.
Come on now Baldwin. Be reasonable.
> > What is interesting is that most people think of such systems working
> > only on the molecular or atomic scale. This is simply mistaken.
> > Exactly the same thing can be shown to work on the macro scale. Put a
> > bunch of marbles on one side of a box with a fan in the middle
> > (protected on one side from interaction with the marbles). As the box
> > is shaken, the fan will move in one direction most of the time until
> > maximum homogeny is reached and an equal number of marbles are hitting
> > the fan blades from all directions over a given span of time. The
> > marbles in the box have now reached maximum entropy for a given level
> > of random energy. No more "useful work" can be extracted from the
> > random energy of the marbles in the box. The very same thing can be
> > said for a "neat" vs. a "messy" room. A neat room, if shaken
> > randomly, will most likely produce much more useful work than a messy
> > room in which the stuff in the room is more randomly distributed. The
> > very same thing happens in the molecular world.
>
> You do understand that work means the integral of force over distance and
> not effort, don't you? How is a neat room more capable of producing physical
> work than a messy one?
If a neat room happens to have all the shoes neatly aligned together
in one part of the room, then shaking the room with random energy
would cause the should to move to more statistically likely locations
(i.e., toward maximum randomness or homogeny). During this moving
process, if a fan were placed in the room, the blades of the fan would
be hit by the shoes more often on one side than on the other, causing
the fan to spin more in one direction than in the other. This would
continue until the shoes reached their maximum state of randomness for
that level of energy. At this point, the fan would stop spinning and
no more useful work could be optioned from that room. Get it?
This is exactly the same thing that happens with molecules spinning a
fan between Box A and Box B when the partition is removed and they
have yet to reach their maximum state of random distribution between
both boxes.
> > Do you know that "useful work" can be obtained from cooling off a hot
> > container of molecules or by heating up this very same system once it
> > is cooled (in a gravity field that is)? It is the change in balance
> > that enables useful work to be obtained from a system independent upon
> > weather random energy is coming or going. However, at a constant
> > level of random energy, every system has a particular "maximum"
> > entropy. At that maximum, all the constituents of that system are at
> > their maximum level of random or homogenous distribution. They do not
> > leave that maximum or else the fan would start spinning again and, as
> > we all know from experience, this just never happens.
>
> Thermal equilibrium is not the same thing as maximum entropy. You are
> inventing terms for thermodynamics, which is a good way to confuse matters.
Thermal equilibrium happens at the same time that maximum entropy is
reached. Tell me, how could as system have "less than maximum
equilibrium" and be in thermal equilibrium at the same time?
> > The fact is that even if no "useful work" can be taken out of a
> > molecular system, such as one in which two molecular enatiomers are
> > allowed to mix with each other at constant temperature, pressure, and
> > volume, the system as a whole is said to have undergone an increase in
> > entropy to arrive at a new "maximum" entropy for the homogenized
> > mixtures of these two molecules. The very same thing can be used to
> > describe a homogenous mixture of playing cards, which can be
> > statistically differentiated from a non-homogenous non-random mixture.
>
> Baloney. The sorting of playing cards only matters in the mind of the
> observer. Physics doesn't care whether the Jack comes before the Queen or
> after the Ace.
The statistics of random/homogenous arrangement are exactly the same.
Playing cards, like marbles or molecules, have a certain number of
potential states that they can be in. The various patterns of such
states are statistically different from each other with some potential
like patterns containing far more, exponentially more, arrangements
than other types of more non-random patterns.
Again, randomness is not just in the eye of the human beholder but can
in fact be calculated. This is true when it comes to molecules,
marbles, and even playing cards. If you don't believe me, set up a
little experiment to test my assertion. See if you can tell the
difference between a randomly shuffled stack of playing cards vs. one
that was deliberately stacked. Of course, since a high degree of
randomness can be deliberately designed, you can't tell the difference
between design and randomness if the cards as highly statistically
random in arrangement. However, you can tell the difference between
randomness and deliberate design if you find the cards are highly
statistically non-random in arrangement. This is a measurable
difference that can be mathematically determined.
If you are still confused, get someone like Howard Hershey or Mike
Goodrich to explain it to you (I personally would recommend Mike over
Howard at this point).
> ========================================
> Chez Watt!!??
> >
> > Also, entropy really has nothing to do with the "burning" of any of
> > the molecules of a system to release the energy from their molecular
> > bonds. At least a certain aspect of entropy is about obtaining
> > "useful work" based on a detectable difference in how random energy is
> > reacting with the intact non-burnt parts of a system. Burning
> > flammable molecules in different states of mixing or non-mixing would
> > tell us nothing about their level of entropy. The same heat would be
> > released regardless of how the molecules were arranged in the system.
> > Therefore, contrary to Zach's most interesting assertion, burning says
> > nothing about different levels of entropy - even when it comes to
> > playing cards.
> =========================================
>
> Are you truly that ignorant of chemical thermodynamics? How did you get
> through college? After a redox reaction (burning), there is a change in
> entropy between reactants and products. Look up the standard tables and the
> back of your Chemistry text book.
I'm not arguing about redox reactions. I'm arguing about
thermodynamic entropy that acts on intact molecules that are not
chemically interacting. Burning them doesn't say anything about their
ability to do useful work with the application of outside random
energy (i.e., heat) to the non-burnt system. My statement here might
have been a little confusing to those unfamiliar with the point of
this thread, but it really shouldn't have confused you.
You, William, and Zach are arguing that you can prove that the deck of
playing cards doesn't change levels of entropy by showing that the
same amount of heat is released no matter how the cards are stacked.
If anything should be a "Chez Watt" this argument should be. Why?
Because you can burn otherwise non-interacting molecules in various
arrangements of otherwise low and high entropic states and the burning
of such mixed and unmixed molecules will also produce the same amount
of heat energy. This, however, says absolutely nothing about the
useful work that could otherwise be obtained from the system without
any chemical reactions taking place whatsoever.
For example, imagine a bunch of wooden marbles on one side of a box
with a fan in the middle (the fan being protected on one side).
Applying random energy to the box would cause the unburnt wooden
marbles to move so that they hit the fan on one side of the blades
more than on the other side of the blades, causing the fan to rotate
more in one direction than in the other. The useful energy obtained
from this fan can be measured. The fan would spin until all the
marbles were maximally randomized throughout the box. Then, the fan
would stop spinning. Now, burn the marbles at any point along this
path toward maximum homogeny/randomness. Do you obtain any more or
less heat from the marbles when are maximally randomized vs. some
state of "less-than-maximum-randomness"? Obviously not.
The same thing is true on the molecular level. So, the argument of
burning playing cards is fallacious since burning has nothing at all
to do with the potential useful energy of the actual entropic
non-burnt "order" of a system or the potential to get useful work from
this state of non-random non-homogenized order.
There, is that more clear?
Sean Pitman
> The playing card argument shows the fallacious nature of your argument about
> marbles. If you can derive work from having marbles in a box divided by
> their two colors, then there exists a physical process that can separate the
> marbles by acting on the difference from which the potential energy stems.
> There is no need for that process to involve intelligence.
There is if you aren't by some very powerful source of blue light.
Come on now Baldwin. Be reasonable.
> > What is interesting is that most people think of such systems working
> > only on the molecular or atomic scale. This is simply mistaken.
> > Exactly the same thing can be shown to work on the macro scale. Put a
> > bunch of marbles on one side of a box with a fan in the middle
> > (protected on one side from interaction with the marbles). As the box
> > is shaken, the fan will move in one direction most of the time until
> > maximum homogeny is reached and an equal number of marbles are hitting
> > the fan blades from all directions over a given span of time. The
> > marbles in the box have now reached maximum entropy for a given level
> > of random energy. No more "useful work" can be extracted from the
> > random energy of the marbles in the box. The very same thing can be
> > said for a "neat" vs. a "messy" room. A neat room, if shaken
> > randomly, will most likely produce much more useful work than a messy
> > room in which the stuff in the room is more randomly distributed. The
> > very same thing happens in the molecular world.
>
> You do understand that work means the integral of force over distance and
> not effort, don't you? How is a neat room more capable of producing physical
> work than a messy one?
If a neat room happens to have all the shoes neatly aligned together
in one part of the room, then shaking the room with random energy
would cause the should to move to more statistically likely locations
(i.e., toward maximum randomness or homogeny). During this moving
process, if a fan were placed in the room, the blades of the fan would
be hit by the shoes more often on one side than on the other, causing
the fan to spin more in one direction than in the other. This would
continue until the shoes reached their maximum state of randomness for
that level of energy. At this point, the fan would stop spinning and
no more useful work could be optioned from that room. Get it?
This is exactly the same thing that happens with molecules spinning a
fan between Box A and Box B when the partition is removed and they
have yet to reach their maximum state of random distribution between
both boxes.
> > Do you know that "useful work" can be obtained from cooling off a hot
> > container of molecules or by heating up this very same system once it
> > is cooled (in a gravity field that is)? It is the change in balance
> > that enables useful work to be obtained from a system independent upon
> > weather random energy is coming or going. However, at a constant
> > level of random energy, every system has a particular "maximum"
> > entropy. At that maximum, all the constituents of that system are at
> > their maximum level of random or homogenous distribution. They do not
> > leave that maximum or else the fan would start spinning again and, as
> > we all know from experience, this just never happens.
>
> Thermal equilibrium is not the same thing as maximum entropy. You are
> inventing terms for thermodynamics, which is a good way to confuse matters.
Thermal equilibrium happens at the same time that maximum entropy is
reached. Tell me, how could as system have "less than maximum
equilibrium" and be in thermal equilibrium at the same time?
> > The fact is that even if no "useful work" can be taken out of a
> > molecular system, such as one in which two molecular enatiomers are
> > allowed to mix with each other at constant temperature, pressure, and
> > volume, the system as a whole is said to have undergone an increase in
> > entropy to arrive at a new "maximum" entropy for the homogenized
> > mixtures of these two molecules. The very same thing can be used to
> > describe a homogenous mixture of playing cards, which can be
> > statistically differentiated from a non-homogenous non-random mixture.
>
> > Also, entropy really has nothing to do with the "burning" of any of
> > the molecules of a system to release the energy from their molecular
> > bonds. At least a certain aspect of entropy is about obtaining
> > "useful work" based on a detectable difference in how random energy is
> > reacting with the intact non-burnt parts of a system. Burning
> > flammable molecules in different states of mixing or non-mixing would
> > tell us nothing about their level of entropy. The same heat would be
> > released regardless of how the molecules were arranged in the system.
> > Therefore, contrary to Zach's most interesting assertion, burning says
> > nothing about different levels of entropy - even when it comes to
> > playing cards.
There, I hope this clears things up for you a bit . . .
Sean Pitman
Funny how even those teachers who strongly disagreed with many of my
opinions during my years of formal education where forced to give me
top grades anyway. I know how to get the grades from a teacher even
if I disagree with what that teacher is teaching. Fortunately, your
less-than-intuitive opinions don't affect me like they do your
unfortunate students. I am actually surprised that you still have a
teaching job in any sort of decent non-desperate institution given
your attitude and the way you express your opinions.
Sean Pitman
> > If you find a box of red and white marbles with the red marbles all on
> > one side of the box (knowing that they are identical marbles except
> > for color), it would be far more insane to propose that some source of
> > supper powerful blue light from some star caused the very
> > non-homogenous non-random pattern vs. an deliberate cause. Also
> > imagine finding the red marbles all clustered in a square in the
> > center of the box. How would you explain that sort of internally
> > symmetrical non-homogeny/non-randomness? Now, you would have to come
> > up with some perfectly arranged source of highly powerful perfectly
> > balanced blue light on all 6 sides of the box. Please . . . At some
> > point the evidence for deliberate design in such a situation should
> > overwhelm even the most hard headed.
>
> You still haven't corrected your flawed treatment of entropy. Thermodynamics
> doesn't care whether you have an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of
> marbles.
Again, these types of arrangements are not simply a matter of mere
aesthetics, but are statistically determinable as being more or less
random/homogenous.
Bobby D. Bryant
Suppose you have a set of ten books, labeled "1" through "10". Does their
thermodynamic entropy depend on their ordering on the shelf? (Assuming
all are of the same mass, composition, temperature, etc.)
Suppose they are also labeled "one" through "ten", in lots of different
languages, and in different orderings for each language. Does their
thermodynamic entropy now depend on what language(s) the observer
understands?
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Zachriel
"Sean Pitman" <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
news:80d0c26f.04072...@posting.google.com...
>
> If a neat room happens to have all the shoes neatly aligned together
> in one part of the room, then shaking the room with random energy
> would cause the should to move to more statistically likely locations
> (i.e., toward maximum randomness or homogeny). During this moving
> process, if a fan were placed in the room, the blades of the fan would
> be hit by the shoes more often on one side than on the other, causing
> the fan to spin more in one direction than in the other. This would
> continue until the shoes reached their maximum state of randomness for
> that level of energy. At this point, the fan would stop spinning and
> no more useful work could be optioned from that room. Get it?
Let's see. We have a box of marbles, red and white, segregated by color; or
shoes for that matter. They are separated by a fan. We shake the box. The
fan doesn't turn in one particular direction. What is wrong with this
experiment? Shaking and color have nothing to do with another. The color of
the marbles is a distinction without a difference.
So we have two containers. One is filled with a gas called "Sean", the other
filled with a gas called "Pitman". There is no other difference between the
gases. We open a door which separates the gases. There is--amazingly--no
change in entropy.
Now, put marbles with different and relevant properties in the box, such as
marbles of different weights and sizes, and they will segregate naturally
when shaken. If you want, you can call the little ones "Sean" and the big
ones "Pitman".
Howard Hershey
marbles and 50 blue marbles in a box, carefully drew a line down the
middle, put the box on my table, put on the lid, and randomly shook it
without lifting it off the table.
To my utter amazement, I got a result that makes Sean's prediction of
the improbability of the red marbles on one side and the blue marbles on
the other look positively probable. It just goes to show that actually
doing the experiment rather than relying on gedanken experiments can
lead to unexpected observations. All 100 marbles were on the one side
of the box! The probability that random shaking would result in all 100
marbles on the same side, rather than the expected 50 on each side, is
the same as the probability that all the red marbles would be on one
side and blue on the other. There are only two ways that all the
marbles can wind up on the same side of the box by chance (all on the
left or all on the right). There are litterally millions and millions
of other possible distributions possible.
The probability that this would happen by chance alone is so low that it
is perfectly reasonable to think that this result must be the result of
intelligent design. Aware that it could just be that I had hit the
chance jackpot, I naturally repeated the experiment. To my utter
amazement, all the marbles were again on one side of the box! Not only
that, but whenever I repeated the experiment, the marbles always wound
up on the *same* side of the box (toward the west in this case). That
makes this result even less likely to be due to chance than the 50:50
distribution of red and blue marbles that Sean finds to be clear
evidence of intelligent design.
Admitedly I did not actually see any intelligent designer moving all the
marbles to one side, but, according to the arguments of intelligent
design, that is unneccessary. Nor do I have any idea as to why
he/she/it/they would want to move all the marbles to the west, but again
that is not necessary according to ID theorists.
Just for curiosity, I took off the lid of the box and shook it. No
matter how hard I shook it, as soon as I stopped all the marbles rolled
to the west side of the box. So not only have I seen actual evidence,
based on the improbability of the events I saw, that intelligent design
is involved in this process, I have actually seen the intelligent
designer move the marbles. Well, not actually seen, since the designer
is clearly invisible to human eyes, but I did see how he swiftly moved
all the marbles to one side of the box.
So I guess I will have to agree with Sean that an invisible designer
exists who moves marbles so that they form extremely rare and improbable
distributions. But not, apparently in ways that involve the color of
the marbles (perhaps the ID is color-blind?) but only their distribution
relative to the line I drew on the box.
However, I am afraid I am no physicist, so I don't know how to calculate
the entropy of this result. Perhaps Sean will be able to? ;-)
Mike Goodrich
Right. Perhaps you have given up on a serious discussion?
Anyway, please be sure and submit your lab notebook with all you careful
notes on your experiments and their setup details, etc., so that your peers
can review it. You never know, you could have a systematic error or bias in
your setup or procedure ...