"Bruce Barnett" wrote in message
...
"Steve Peterson" writes:

While entropy is related to energy flows, it is not a measure of energy.
The second law shows that if energy flows, there must be an overall
increase
in entropy. If an ordered system is created, or if order in a system
increases, there must be a greater increase in the entropy of the
surroundings (i.e. the rest of the universe). It certainly does not
inhibit
formation of ordered systems, only describes the cost of creating that
order.

That's a nice way to put it.
But I question one part. Forgive my weakness on thermodynamics. I'm more
CS than EE.

If an ordered system is created, or if order in a system
increases, there must be a greater increase in the entropy of the
surroundings (i.e. the rest of the universe).

When you say "order" aren't you referring to energy?

And when order is increased, does the energy inside this piece
increase or decrease?

I am thinking of the "order" or rather - information - stored in a DNA
molecule.
Energy and entropy can't be directly compared, it is like apples and
oranges. They are just different things. However, on some kind of
subjective comparison, when some molecular changes occur involving deltaH
(change of chemical energy, or free energy) and deltaS (change of entropy),
the energy change is typically much greater. The driving force for a
chemical reaction is called the Gibbs free energy, deltaH - TdeltaS, where H
is essentially the energy in the chemical bonds and T is the Temperature
(~300 degrees Kelvin at room temperature). So the entropy term gets
multiplied by about 300. There are changes that are largely entropy driven,
such as phase changes (like melting) that involve changes in order but not
so much in the way of changing bonding. Interestingly, entropy changes are
also very major effects in black holes. Another effect that is largely
entropy is conformation changes of macromolecules, like a change of DNA
between random and a double helix.
I got distracted and carried away. Whether energy increases or
decreases with decreasing entropy (increasing order) depends on the details
of bond breaking and making.

This is going further and further away from woodworking.

Steve

Perhaps entropy and evolution aren't good disciplines to combine.
Randomness and chaos in individual DNA molecules is miniscule
comparted to the energy in the Universe.

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