Managing the chaos

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Managing the chaos

• The science of Entropy and its impact on our
  lives
• Chris Collison
• Assistant Professor of Chemistry
• cjcscha_at_rit.edu

2
Dreamland?

• 1967 testimony before Senate subcommittee
  indicated that by 1985
• Work week of 22 hours, or
• 27 working weeks per year, or
• Retire for good at 38
• Computers, satellites, robotics Productivity
  boosting machines
• Why did this not happen?

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1956 GE Dishwasher www.adclassix.com
1966 Pontiac Bonneville www.adclassix.com
1949 Thor Washing Machine www.adclassix.com
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Inspired by
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Outline

• Quantifying Chaos
• Entropys history
• Entropy in Thermodynamics
• Entropy in Chemistry
• How do we define entropy?
• Entropy in our daily lives.

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Entropy in our daily lives

• In the home
• Automotives
• Technology
• Education

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Driving Forces of Nature

• Energy
• Entropy
• Process will occur when Energy is decreased, or
  when Entropy is increased.

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1st Lets consider Energy

• Laws of Thermodynamics - laws we must live by
• Energy Cannot be Created or Destroyed
• Impossibility of perpetual motion machines
• Why is energy important to us?
• Where does all our energy come from?

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The pump?
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The Sun?

• But how can we store this solar energy?

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Energy storage
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Energy Consumption and Production

• Stored energy in fossil fuels provides us with
  our energy needs.

Data from www.doe.gov
And energy demand?
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Growing economies require more energy

• Energy demand is increasing

Data from www.doe.gov
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Cost of Energy (Electricity)
Data from www.doe.gov
What is our expenditure limited to? What is our
efficiency limited to? Where does chaos come in?
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Two Kinds of Energy

• Ordered Energy Work done
• Disordered Energy Heat
• Increased vibrations, translations of microscopic
  particles
• How are they linked?

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Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot(June 1, 1796 -
August 24, 1832)

• Scientific study of the steam engine
• Efficiency in early stages of engine development
  was mere 3.
• Carnot showed that efficiency of an engine design
  is always limited to about 40.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_LC3A9onard_
Sadi_Carnot
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Carnot Cycle

• Hot gas expands, doing work
• Gas compressed to original state
• Net energy 0
• Work done enclosed in curve
• Heat in Work done Heat out

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Entropy in Thermodynamics

• Entropys effect is that
• Heat ? work requires taking heat from a hot
  source and depositing waste heat to a cold
  reservoir
• Efficiency is given by
• Efficiency is not 100
• So how do we increase efficiency?

What impact has this on electricity generation?
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Coal Power Stations

• Combustion efficiency is 99.5
• But heat ? electricity (consumer) is 30-37 with
  a pulverized coal burner
• Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power
  plants give higher efficiencies
• Supercritical boilers give efficiencies in the
  40s. (Again, global efficiency of getting
  electricity to consumer from the coal).
• Electric conversion (Transformers, transport) is
  some 90

Data from www.doe.gov
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So why are we fundamentally Limited?

• Entropy and 2nd Law of thermodynamics restrict us
• Lord Kelvin stated mechanical work that could
  have been harnessed is irrecoverably lost to man

William Thomson 1st Baron Kelvin 1824-1907
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Kelvin and Clausius

• It is impossible to build an engine that
  operates on a cycle whose net effect is the
  cooling of a heat-reservoir and the raising of a
  weight
• We cant take heat out of the ocean to power an
  ocean liner

Rudolph Clausius 1822-1888
Heat engines Hot ? Cold, with waste heat
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Ordered energy?

• Work considered as ordered
• Heat energy is considered disordered
• Only so much ordered energy we can take from
  disordered energy
• A hot bath is only pleasant while the water is
  hot
• A luke warm bath has as much attraction as an ice
  cold bath this warmth is irrecoverable

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Inefficiency

• Power stations are inefficient because
• Disordered energy must be converted to ordered
  energy
• We are pushing against natures tendency towards
  disorder

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Can we use Entropy to our advantage in
Thermodynamics?

• Fridges to heat our homes
• Heat is useful in winter
• Work (electricity) is used to move heat from
  inside the fridge to outside the fridge
• Ordered energy is ultimately converted to
  disordered energy

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Taking this idea further

• How about building a fridge to cool down the
  ground?
• Heating Cycle, Geothermal Technology - WFI Global
• Cooling Cycle, Geothermal Technology - WFI Global

But againWhat really is Entropy?
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Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann February 20, 1844
September 5, 1906

• Boltzmann was the hero of statistical mechanics
  and microstates

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Statistically

• Entropy might be defined as the number of
  microstates (configurations) that are available
  to the system
• Where S Entropy
• kB is Boltzmanns constant (1.3810-23 J K-1)
• W is the number of microstates corresponding to
  the observed macrostate

Lets look at an example
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An unbound thesis of 3 pages is blown by a freak
gust of wind

• It lands in a corner of the courtyard all pages
  face up!
• Still in order?
• 3 pages ? 3! 6 possible combinations
• 123 132
• 231 213
• 312 321
• 1 ordered microstate, 5 disordered microstates
• Likely to be disordered for probability reasons
• Yet change in entropy is low, albeit positive

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Lets now consider 200 pages

• 1 ordered microstate, 7.9 x 10374 disordered
  microstates
• For ordered thesis,
• S0
• For disordered thesis
• S1.2 x 10-20 JK-1mol-1
• But Entropy difference is so small?

Whats the fuss all about?
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200 pages versus 6.02 x 1023 atoms

• 1 x 1025 water molecules in a can of soda
• Hence Entropy is very important to chemists.
• Chemists take ownership perhaps

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Summing up!

• Entropy is degree of disorder
• Entropy is a driving force for spontaneous events
• Higher Entropy is inevitable
• Universe started in a very low entropy state
• Extremely low probability
• Entropy can be calculated using probability and
  statistics.

So how does Entropy impact our daily lives?
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A picture of order

• Ease of chaos versus the hard work of order

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Chaos continues
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Rebuilding
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War in Iraq

• Ease of destruction, regime change
• Difficulty of rebuilding
• Should we have known better?
• Doesnt Entropy aid in our predictions?

Where else do we see entropy?
Choice!
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Choice the American necessity

• Choice of
• Healthcare
• pasta sauce
• Cereal
• energy provider
• retirement plan
• Of course this is good for competition but
  complexity leads to an increase in entropy!

Pasta Sauce
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Pasta Sauce

• Choices, Choices, choices

So what are the costs and benefits and where does
entropy fit in?
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The system and the surroundings

• Carnot Cycle tells us we must observe
• The heat engine (the system)
• The Surroundings
• When we consider entropy of pasta sauce we must
  consider
• The Benefits (the system)
• Pricing pressure through competition
• Getting the right sauce for our taste buds
• The Costs (The surroundings)

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Global Costs of Choice Pasta sauce

• For each brand
• Marketing
• Distribution
• Quality control
• Supply of raw ingredients
• For me
• Making an educated decision (working through the
  brands)
• Risk of making the wrong choice

Remember Entropy always increases
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Back to our dreamland

• 1967 testimony before Senate subcommittee
  indicated that by 1985
• Work week of 22 hours, or
• 27 working weeks per year, or
• Retire for good at 38
• Computers, satellites, robotics Productivity
  boosting machines
• Why did this not happen?

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The total equation

• Remember - Laws of thermodynamics compels us to
  look at the total equation not just the
  system
• Lets look at some examples
• Computers
• Automobiles
• Surely technological advances reduce chaos and
  promote efficiency

Lets have a look
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Computer vs. Abacus

• Speed but cost is production facility
• RD expensive Moores law How much is the
  industry worth?
• Worldwide Photolithography Capital spending in
  2001 was 39.1Billion
• (Deutsche Bank Theres Moore to Come Global
  Equity Research document, 2001)

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What matters most

• Total entropy increase in a thermodynamic system
• Silicon chip manufacture requires
• gases, chemicals, and solvents
• These become part of our environment
• Increases the entropy of our planet
• One 15cm silicon wafer (a few dozen chips)
  requires
• 9kg of liquid chemicals,
• 6m3 gases
• 8,610 liters of water

(Aaron Sachs, Virtual Ecology, World Watch,
January/February 1999, p.16)
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IT Support

• Bugs
• Adware

• Viruses
• Crashes

Verizon ads Its the network
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Cars vs. Horse and Buggy

• Roads, highways, bridges, parking lots required
• Maintenance (potholes, rust, snowplowing)
• Bodily harm, property damage
• Insurance policies
• Automobile emissions
• Lung, eye, generalhealth problems
• Environmental Protection Agency, regulations,
  bureaucracies
• Fuel infrastructure

Who pays for this apparent time saving
device? What does this time saving device cost us?
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Cars

• Car repair
• Trained mechanic
• Shop computer for engine checking
• Computer needs maintenance and software
• State inspections/DMV/bureaucracy
• More gadgets more complex car repair
• Commercials of course do not mention
  thermodynamics they show you the car of your
  dreams!

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Some other issues

• Time sapping VCR/DVRs
• George Foreman Grill
• too tough to clean
• Spam

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Spam

• Emails, resumes, advertisements
• easy to write
• send en-masse
• Monster.com
• send resumes to all jobs advertised
• Electronic searching of resumes now required!
• No interview because of incorrect buzz-words

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Mycourses- professors that send more emails out

• In the past we had to contact you in class you
  had to listen in class!
• Now professors can send out mass announcements
  that dont get read because youre spending all
  your time deleting other spam
• This is called entropy of the written word!

While were on the subject
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Proliferation of information

• Blogs, podcast, print media, tv, radio, web media
• Importance of Google, Yahoo, etc search
  engines!
• Where can we make money as entrepreneurs in the
  war against entropy??
• Waste Management
• Data mining
• Surveys/statistics

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What type of disorder exists in your world?
Entropy in Education
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Entropy of education

• Specialization
• Separation of disciplines
• Finding your niche
• General science still has a huge part to play.

So whats the solution? Can we win the war on
entropy? Lets stay with education to think about
what we can do
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Practical philosophy

• High entropy lifestyle
• high production, consumption, obsolescence
• Well ultimately pay a high price
• Laws of thermodynamics can be used by educators
  as a focal point for unification of knowledge
• Solution teach values that are in conformity
  with the laws of nature

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Lets talk together about entropy

• Not pollution
• Not socioeconomic disorders
• Not environmental concerns
• Not global warming
• We can talk collectively (reporters, politicians,
  parents, educators) about how all of these
  problems are linked by entropy

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Now, go clean your room
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Thank you for your attention.

• Questions?