Why everyone is so unorganised, the Thermodynamic explaination!
It should be no surprise that everyone has felt unorganised, some people(like me!) feel it everyday, while some others feel it one day or another.(they are so unorganised) There is a general consensus among everyone, that unorganisation is inevitable, but what is the reason behind it? Let’s find out!
Probability and Unorganisation
Lets start at a seemingly different topic, probability. Imagine you have a copy of the first volume of Hajime Iseyama’s Shingeki No Kyojin(or Attack on Titan, a Superb read by the way!). It roughly contains 70 double sided pages. If you have it unbinded, there would be 70 seperate sheets, with page 1 ahead of 2 and so on. If you toss it in the air, the sheets naturally will scatter on the floor. If you pick them up and arrange them in the order you have picked them up, there are about 70⁷⁰ possible combinations for the order of the pages. That’s about 1.435036 x 10¹²⁹ possible combinations! However, there is only one combination, i.e, 1,2,3,4,5……..140(there are 70 double sides pages, so 140 pages in all) in which the pages are ordered. All the other combinations can have slight or massive disparities, from 1,3,2,4,5,….140 to 1,140,70…. and so on. Therefore, it is a statistically low probabilty that the pages end up in the correct order. The pages will not be organised in all but one case. You might ask, then why were the pages in the correct order when I recieved the hard copy? That’s because Iseyama instructed the Binder to bind the pages in that order.
This probabilty is an indirect cause of unorganisation.
Probability, Entropy and Thermodynamics
In the graveyard of Zentralfriedhof, Vienna, among the graves of greats such as Beethoven, lies a grave on which is inscribed a formula, S= K log W. This is the formula derived by Ludwig Boltzmann between 1872 and 1875, and is inscribed on his grave. This gives the value for entropy, which is basically the numeric value of how organised a system is. The higher the entropy, the higher the unorganisation. The lower the entropy, the more organised a system is. The entropy, in turn depends on statistic probability. Thus, probability controls organisation.
But how does thermodynamics come into play here? Thermodynamics, as many of you may know, is the study of energy. But, probability does play a role in thermodynamics. The reason for unorganisation also lies in thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodymics, says that an object loses energy to several neccessary proccesses such as friction and drag. This loss exites the particles of the system. Thus, they start moving about, vibrating,oscilating. They disrupt the organisation the particles. Entropy, thus, increases in this system.
There are about 10²⁴ molecules of CO2 in a bottle of coke, when you open it, and they are all released into the atmosphere. Imagine, just 140 pages gaves us such a large number that most calculators cannot even show it. The combinations of order of CO2 molecules, is thus way beyond the computing power of even the strongest of quantum computers we have on earth. And in just one case, the particles arrange themselves in hte exact arrangement they had in the bottle of Coke. Thus, there are a lot of other combinations. And the universe finds it easier to arrange it in one unorganised order than an organsied one, since the energy required to attain such an arrangement is significantly lower than the energy required for attaining the perfect arrangement, increasing the entropy.(There are some special exeptions, the reason for this is basically that the universe uses trial and error to attain a particular configuration. To have so many trials to attend the perfect configuration, in such a large number of possible configurations, is practically impossible, even for the universe.)
Thus, the second law of thermodynamics states that an object which looses energy over time pushes the entropy of the system it is in towards the higher end, towards unorganisation. This law is universal, and applies to every single organism and particle.
So the next time someone tries to tell you about how unorganised you are, just show them this article, or simply say- if the universe in unorganised, why cant I be?