Practice question · Multiple choice
The second law says entropy tends to increase, yet nothing in Newton's laws forbids a broken cup reassembling. How can a statistical tendency be as reliable as a law?
Hints
- Count the arrangements: how many ways are there to be shattered versus intact?
- Ask whether the reassembly is impossible or merely overwhelmingly improbable.
Show the answer
D. Because disordered arrangements overwhelm ordered ones utterly.
Why
The microscopic laws really are reversible and a reassembling cup violates none of them; what rules it out is counting, and at 10²³ particles the ratio is smaller than anything observable in the age of the universe. The statistical reading is testable: in systems of a few particles entropy decreases are routinely measured, and the fluctuation theorems say how often.
Practise Thermodynamics and Statistical Ideas
The app has 6 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Mathematics I is free to start.