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For an open thermodynamic system in which heat and work are transferred by paths separate from the paths for transfer of matter, using this generic balance equation, with respect to the rate of change with time of the extensive quantity entropy , the entropy balance equation is: [53] [54] [note 1] = = ˙ ^ + ˙ + ˙ where = ˙ ^ is the net rate ...
Entropy in information theory is directly analogous to the entropy in statistical thermodynamics. The analogy results when the values of the random variable designate energies of microstates, so Gibbs's formula for the entropy is formally identical to Shannon's formula.
Despite the foregoing, there is a difference between the two quantities. The information entropy Η can be calculated for any probability distribution (if the "message" is taken to be that the event i which had probability p i occurred, out of the space of the events possible), while the thermodynamic entropy S refers to thermodynamic probabilities p i specifically.
Entropy is also commonly computed using the natural logarithm (base e, where e is Euler's number), which produces a measurement of entropy in nats per symbol and sometimes simplifies the analysis by avoiding the need to include extra constants in the formulas. Other bases are also possible, but less commonly used.
Boltzmann's equation—carved on his gravestone. [1]In statistical mechanics, Boltzmann's equation (also known as the Boltzmann–Planck equation) is a probability equation relating the entropy, also written as , of an ideal gas to the multiplicity (commonly denoted as or ), the number of real microstates corresponding to the gas's macrostate:
The mathematical basis with respect to the association entropy has with order and disorder began, essentially, with the famous Boltzmann formula, = , which relates entropy S to the number of possible states W in which a system can be found. [13]
The connection between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy is given by Boltzmann's equation, which says that S = k B ln W. If we take the base-2 logarithm of W , it will yield the average number of questions we must ask about the microstate of the physical system in order to determine its macrostate.
As the entropy is a function of state the result is independent of the path. The above relation shows that the determination of the entropy requires knowledge of the heat capacity and the equation of state (which is the relation between P,V, and T of the substance involved). Normally these are complicated functions and numerical integration is ...