Entropy Explained

The concept of entropy is generally not well understood among laymen. With the help of several physicists, including Wolfgang Gasser and Malcolm Schreiber, I have composed the following article in an attempt to correct a common misunderstanding.[1] Contrary to what many laymen think, there is no Law of Entropy which states that order must always decrease. That is a layman's fiction, although born from a small kernel of reality. The actual Law of Entropy is better known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The First Law is that energy is not created or destroyed, and the Third Law is that absolute zero cannot be achieved--each of these laws is actually entailed from the first, in conjunction with certain other assumptions. But it is the Second Law that many laymen incorrectly think says that order must always decrease.

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