I’m not looking for a quantitative answer (though one would be good) but rather something along the lines of either high or low entropy.
Here’s my thinking. When entropy is being explained to laypeople, an often used analogy (apart from books sorted in alphabetical order being scattered) is a house that has been allowed to run into disrepair. Paint peels, mould grows, dust accumulates. So in this analogy, spiderwebs forming in the corners would be (at least indicative of) high entropy.
But the mother spider educating her babies on entropy (you know, before they eat her) would tell an opposite analogy of a comfortable spiderweb being exposed to the elements, decaying and vanishing, as an example of increasing disorder. The difference is in what is viewed as ‘disorder’ but entropy has a stricter mathematical definition, so is free of such subjective thinking.
My thinking would be low entropy, as a spiderweb is a structure of sorts, so it should have lower entropy than the proteins making it up. A similar train of thought to the mould growing in the neglected shower. How correct is this logic?
I’d look at the energy used to produce the web. Energy consumption is always a limiting factor in entropy increase.
Given the energy needs of a spider are quite small, there isn’t a whole lot of entropy that can be produced. And most of that energy is probably used doing non-web stuff (like base metabolism).
(Many species of spiders consume their webs in the morning to reuse the material the next night. So that saves energy on protein production.)
I’ve always found that the “messiness” analogy to be misleading, and I think you’re confused by it as well.
When entropy increases, it’s not that the system is increasing in “dirtiness” or “disrepair” as we see it, it’s rather that the number of possible ways in which the molecules can orient themselves (with the same energy) increases. Ludwig Boltzmann described these orientations as “microstates”.
I’m not quite sure I understand your spiderweb/mold analogy. Perhaps you can explain it a little more in depth.
Someone may come along with a more accessible answer.
Whether entropy is high or low is somewhat a relative thing. And you need to define the system you are describing. Is the spider web lower entropy than the same amount of web material spread out in a uniform mass? Yes. Is it lower in entropy than the food the spider had to eat to make the web material to give her the energy required to move about while making the web? No.
Entropy is tricky. I wasn’t thinking too clearly about the OP’s question when I responded earlier (correct answer but missed some stuff).
Note that an individual built thing, a spider web, a building, etc., locally is a decrease in entropy. But an overall increase in entropy took place in making it.
So that spider web in the corner is a sign of increased entropy but all by itself isn’t.
Yeah, I know. S = k log W and all that. But microstates are easily applied to small, simple systems, ie arranging balls in boxes, or gaseous molecules in a chamber. This is a larger, macroscopic object and so is harder to visualise.
Ignore it, I wasn’t thinking when I typed that. What I was trying to say is from the right perspective, things we call disorder are actually ordered structures. Or something. Either way, I was talking about messiness vs entropy.
Thanks. I guess this was the sort of thing I was hinting at. Good answer.
And thank you ftg, your second post is in line with what I would have guessed myself. Glad to know I wasn’t too far off the mark.