Users' questions

What is the physics behind baseball?

What is the physics behind baseball?

“Baseball physics is based on fluid dynamics. A pitch produces a turbulent wake of air behind the ball. The wake gets deflected depending upon which way the ball rotates. For a fastball, this wake gets pushed down, which then pushes the ball up ..

What is the entropy of an object?

entropy, the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system.

Who discovered entropy?

physicist Rudolf Clausius
The term entropy was coined in 1865 [Cl] by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius from Greek en- = in + trope = a turning (point).

What is entropy and its properties?

Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.

How to calculate the entropy of a system?

The entropy of a system is a measure of its disorder and of the unavailability of energy to do work. Calculate the total change in entropy for a system in a reversible process This ratio of Q/T is defined to be the change in entropy ΔS for a reversible process: ΔS= (Q T)rev Δ S = ( Q T) rev. Entropy is a property of state.

Why is entropy a confusing topic in physics?

Entropy is for many people one of the most confusing topics that they hit in introductory physics. Most introductory physics terms like energy, velocity, and temperature refer to things that we are familiar with in our day to day life and have built some intuition for. Few people start taking physics with any intuition for entropy, however.

How is entropy related to ordered molecular motion?

Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system. The concept of entropy provides deep insight into the direction of spontaneous change for many everyday phenomena.

When is the net entropy change of heat positive?

If an amount of heat Q flows from R1 to R2, then the net entropy change for the two reservoirs is which is positive provided that T1 > T2. Thus, the observation that heat never flows spontaneously from cold to hot is equivalent to requiring the net entropy change to be positive for a spontaneous flow of heat.