Rudolf Clausius defines the 2nd law this way: « The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. »
Basically, it means that in any system left to its own devices, order decreases over time. For example, if you poor red dye in a basin of water, the dye molecules and the water molecules don’t stay neatly separated (order). They mix until the water turns pink (maximum randomness of the molecules, or maximum disorder, or maximum entropy). Same thing if you poor hot water into cold water. You get warm water.
Wikipedia says:
In general, according to the second law, the entropy of a system that is not isolated may decrease. An air conditioner, for example, cools the air in a room, thus reducing the entropy of the air. The heat, however, involved in operating the air conditioner always makes a bigger contribution to the entropy of the environment than the decrease of the entropy of the air. Thus the total entropy of the room and the environment increases, in agreement with the second law.
In that spirit, and in case you missed them, here are some of the links I recently pointed to in my Google Shared Items list in the « Elsewhere » sidebar of this blog.
- Satan responsible for illegal immigration, says Utah delegate
- Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
- Iacocca: « Where the Hell Is Our Outrage? »
- Le Towelé to Change All Our Lives for the Better
- James Boyce: George Bush Versus The Manatee: A Battle Of Small Brained Mammals
And bonus entry:
To put it another way, here is Woody Allen’s definition of the 2nd law: « Sooner or later, everything turns to shit ».