3 ms·
The region of higher temperature is much smaller. Entropy is not a pure measure of energy or randomness, but a measure of that within a volume. You'd have small
by pierrebai 8y ago
The region of higher temperature is much smaller. Entropy is not a pure measure of energy or randomness, but a measure of that within a volume. You'd have smaller entropy in a small volume, but higher around it because you would have diverted the ray that would have hit outside the concentrated region.
Were is this reasoning wrong?
- DenisM 8y agoYeah this is all rather confusing... This boils down to a moderately heated BB receiving an large stream of moderately powered photons and either rejecting them or first absorbing and then radiating them away at the same pace without changing its own temperature, regardless of how many photons are coming in.
- MertsA 8y agoYeah I don't see how this argument holds water at all. If you have 10 kW worth of photons focused onto a square inch that absorbs 90% of those photons then that's 9 kW of power that isn't just going to magically disappear and it's not going to reach equilibrium until it's emitting 9 kW of power itself which is certainly going to be thousands of degrees. While the entropy argument is certainly an interesting thought experiment all that means is that the global entropy must somehow still be increasing.