Hey all,
I had a thought this morning as I was playing Solitaire on the computer, and I’d like to get your thoughts on it.
Entropy, defined as the amount of disorder in a closed system, is always increasing according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. In my example, the cards in Solitaire are randomly (okay, I know it’s not really random, but theoretically it’s supposed to be) distributed through the stacks. As a human being, I have the ability to actually DECREASE the entropy by placing the cards in order, and in fact remove the entropy (almost?) entirely from the system. (Assuming I win the game). The example can be expanded to other situations, for example taking a random chunk of iron from the ground and turning it into an organized, working automobile.
Now, we get to my question. Are there any other animals that do this? Have (for example) chimps been able to organize a stack of cards in order from Ace to King? Or are humans unique in this aspect?
Birds build nests. Bees make hives. All life, in fact, decreases entropy with its chemical processes - bacteria, for instance take the jumbled, disordered chemicals in their environment and make more bacteria out of it. You could probably define life as “that which decreases entropy”, actually.
Well, we’re not really reducing entropy. The second law of thermodynamics states that the overall entropy in a closed system always increases (or it could stay constant under awkward conditions if you’re picky), the universe being an example of a closed system.
By putting a deck of cards in order (or completing Solitaire, building a wall etc.), the entropy of the objects being manipulated decreases (though only slightly, as most of their entropy is not in their large-scale arrangement), but the work expended to do that increases the entropy of the environment by a greater amount. i.e. the universe’s entropy continues to increase, following the second law.
Other creatures can also reduce local entropy on a large scale. e.g., birds building nests, beavers building dams. However, life’s greatest example of reducing local entropy is itself. The structures within all living creatures require a lot of expenditure of energy (increasing global entropy) to put together, as they are remarkably ordered.
Hmmm… interesting question and since I’m not at all qualified to answer it, I shall try.
A chimp or any other dexterious animal likely has never organized a deck of cards in ascending or decending order, but only because that relational standard has never been taught him. We’d also assume a human child would never intuitively arrange the cards in such fachion until they’re taught that the order has some significance.
As to whether any animal does, in your larger question, attempt to reduce entropy in any manner from that inherent to nature, all that immediately pops to mind is animals planning for future survival needs and harvesting in a non-random fashion, squirrels cacheing nuts for example. Instead of leaving them lying about randomly, they collect a single material type and assemble it in seperate fashion.
Some animals collect bacteria or other agents to aid in their digestion, although that act obviously isn’t intentional and probably won’t meet your standard.
Apologies if I didn’t follow your criteria exactly. I do think it’s a really interesting question.
Consider the deck of cards as a closed system.
Any external influence exerted on the randon ordered cards destroys the system.
If any attempt is made to ‘order’ the cards they become parts of a larger system including you or the chimp.
When you reorder the cards your efforts result in a net increase in the entropy of the room.
Chimps would have to have a lot of training to persist in stacking a deck or even a suite in order.
I am a firm believer that entropy is not a measure of disorder. Entropy is used in chemistry and chemical engineering equasions and has as units J mol^-1 K^-1. It’s difficult to see how a manipulated deck of cards has more or less J mol^-1 K^-1.
I also believe that “disorder” is lightly correlated with entropy, so it has been used to try to describe this physical property which is otherwise difficult to understand (I don’t have a firm grip of what it really is).
People, as biological entities, do in biological chemistries decrease entropy. We also do so in labscale and production scale chemical reactions and even in simple building temperature control. The former is also done by other animals, the latter is not done by other species (as far as I know).
Building bridges, sorting cards, etc. do not decrease entropy, at least not in a measurable sense.
Only because of the perverse (though historically understandable) convention of multiplying the information-theoretic entropy by the universal gas constant. The molecules of the same quantity of an ideal gas at the same temperature but twice the volume have no more or less energy, but the system has more entropy. It is unfortunate that we express this as Rln2 = 5.8 J mol^-1 K^-1, which obscures the simple answer (“a factor of two per molecule”) and makes it seem like this has something to do with energy.
It only says this about closed adiabatic systems. The universe is of course such a system, but, for example, a stoppered flask is not.
OK, I was including no energy input or output in “closed”. I remember the definition of a closed system being somewhat technical, so maybe this isn’t included.
what josh said above. But to try and explain in laymans terms - I will probably get it all wrong as thermodunamics was never my strongest suit.
all molecules move and the amount of movement is related to their temperature. The higher the temperature the faster they move and vibrate. The entropy content of any system is related to the number of possible conformations or states. The link to disorder is that disorder increases the number of possible states. The release of energy to the environment increases the number of states of the universe which is measured by the change in internal energy per number of particles. Raising the temperature means that a given energy release has less effect in producing more states, hence the K^-1.
There are other forms of entropy increase (e.g. shuffling cards) that dont involve J mol^-1 K^-1 terms, but they are not involved in chemistry to any great deal
To expand slightly on this: Chemical entropy is really an approximation of information-theory entropy, which is mathematical. One could consider the entropy of a theoretical system of playing cards and person without worrying about the molecules they are made of and still have a reasonable concept of entropy. Obviously, the laws of thermodynamics might not apply to that system because they are physical and chemical laws.
my point was that straight mixing (shuffling) problems are fairly rare in chemistry, but thinking about it again I realise that there are actually quite a few examples of straight mixing in chemistry (mixing of gases or liquids). Ignore last sentence