Thankful for the Second Law of Thermodynamics

In a closed system, over time entropy increases.

It was in 11th grade Chemistry that I was taught about how energy is conserved and about how chaos only increases. Our teacher asked us to consider a snowball, thrown at a wall. The energy of the moving snowball changes direction when it hits the wall (sending little pieces of snowball in every direction, until gravity and air resistance bring them to a halt), perhaps melts some of the snow, but the energy never goes away.

Then he held up a jar 1/3 full of little white fuzzy balls, and poured a layer of little black fuzzy balls on top of the white ones, so they formed two strata. He asked for a volunteer to shake the jar, and then said to keep shaking until the distinct layers reformed.


Obviously, no matter how long you shake, they never reform. Once things have become disordered, they do not spontaneously reorder. Left along, things become more chaotic, less organized.

These two concepts have informed my life ever since, but especially the explanation of entropy.

I look back now and can see how hard I try to make things *better* rather than worse. It is meaningful to me that what we do ripples out in effect to the world, having consequences far beyond what we can see in the immediate term. Why would you risk doing something that increases the disorder, the chaos, the bitterness of the world? It is *so* hard to undo some things, impossible to undo them sometimes.

Time to go sort some laundry. See, it's a closed system; those socks aren't going to match themselves.