Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. Physics teachers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the ...

A challenge in materials design is that in both natural and manmade materials, volume sometimes decreases, or increases, with increasing temperature. While there are mechanical explanations for this ...

A new theoretical study offers a possible explanation for how the Universe can grow more complex without violating the second law of thermodynamics. Using a quantum gravity framework called Gravity ...

According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total entropy of a closed process can increase or stay the same, but never decrease. The second law guarantees, for example, that an egg can wobble ...

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” but anyone who’s ever taken an introductory Physics class knows that there’s something more ...

The second law of thermodynamics is one of those puzzling laws of nature that simply emerges from the fundamental rules. It says that entropy, a measure of disorder in the Universe, must always ...

Entropy is one of the most useful concepts in science but also one of the most confusing. This article serves as a brief introduction to the various types of entropy that can be used to quantify the ...