Moving in (a.k.a Maximum Entropy)

Moving is awful. Your stuff is everywhere and you haven't a clue where to put it. If you do put it somewhere, when you need it, you fail to remember where it went. There is no routine to your life and everything takes 50 times longer to do than it should.

Like most things, this can be explained by the three laws of thermodynamics. As everyone knows, the first law is:

"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms."

Here is a picture of us moving in. You should recognize the bike helmet and the boy, but it seems to be in a new place. Further that place (our dining room) is no place for a bike helmet.


See, we have all our stuff, but it is different places and change context and may not make much sense being where it is. But all our stuff is still here. Everywhere.

The second law states:

"The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."

That means that any changing process will increase the level of chaos (entropy) in the system. That level of disorder will maximize once you reach a steady point again. So to get organized, you have to have all you stuff everywhere, nothing goes back to where it was before, nor does anything end up near the other stuff it was near before.

The final law of thermodynamics is that:

"As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum"

.

While most postulate that this means that an absolute zero exists where things are so cold that all thermal energy is gone and that atomic motion stops. Only then does a minimum point of entropy exist. However, I think it means it will be a cold day in Hell before we get this placed cleaned up.



We're still not there, but at least we're in a livable condition.