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Entropy.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the eminent physicist Maxwell defined entropy as a measure of of the disorder or ``randomness'' in matter. In Maxwell's theory, the entropy of a physical body increases linearly with its temperature. As temperature rises, each particle in the body has an increasing amount of thermal energy. Thermal energy, in turn, causes particles to move erratically, thereby disordering the spatial arrangement of the particles.



Clark Thomborson
Fri Oct 3 14:28:46 NZST 1997