The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus, defaulting to keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 08:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One person's theory, out of line with textbook physics. --Pjacobi 14:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - misleading and pointless original research. Byrgenwulf 15:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• How so? •Jim62sch• 22:13, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• That the thermodynamic arrow of time goes from macrostates with lower number of microstates to those with (enormously) higher number of microstates is standard textbook stuff. This can be attributed to any number of Nobel laureates and should not be attributed to Lambert. How the energy comes into the picture seems to be the private part of this private theory, but even if the meaning can be illuminated, the notability has to be assessed. --Pjacobi 23:11, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Heaven forfend energy should matter to thermodynamics. •Jim62sch• 23:43, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As others have noted, this is not original research in Wikepedia policy terms. ..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

* Delete - per original research; the author of this concept has been pushing his views onto talk pages (see Talk:Entropy and Talk:Entropy/Archive3) and articles for two months now. Articles about his websites also went through the Afd process (click here) a month or two ago ago. --Sadi Carnot 15:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The Afd process just cited by Sadi was the deletion debate [1] for Entropy Sites that closed July 1. EdJohnston 17:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Change to Keep and re-write with references citing the article and books this concept is used in (I see it is already going in that direction). I did some research and this energy dispersal theory was conceived by Oxford physical chemist Peter Atkins sometime before 1984. His 1984 very popular book the Second Law is entirely devoted to the non-mathematical interpretation of entropy in terms of “energy dispersion.” I saw this book referenced at least five times in other books before I actually bought this book. The book is written assuming the reader has no scientific background; thus the theory is based on verbal conjectures. He conceives of a intelligent being called “Boltzmann’s Demon” who relentlessly runs around re-organizing and dispersing energy and then goes on to show how Boltzmann’s “W” from his probability equation relates to energy dispersion, which transmits via atomic vibrations and collisions and other verbal arguments. Atkins restates the second law as: “energy tends to disperse”. He states: “each atom carries kinetic energy, and the spreading of the atoms spreads the energy…the Boltzmann equation therefore captures the aspect of dispersal: the dispersal of the entities that are carrying the energy.” This is all I can add for the moment. My internet service will be down for two weeks due to phone-line rewiring issues. I’ll put a good presentation of Atkins’ theory into the article when I’m back. To summarize, I suggest we keep this article; although the concept is not mainstream and although it is only a verbal approximation, skipping over any mathematical details, I think it needs to be kept so that the novice or new student to the subject knows who started this idea. --Sadi Carnot 16:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As others have noted, this is not original research in Wikepedia policy terms. The AfD was for a stub giving only links to the websites (created by a user not involved in these articles), and as such was rightly deleted..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete though the description of entropy as "useless energy" cracked me up. There may be a point in here related to accessibility of microstates, but this is OR, essentially vanity, and self-admittedly inaccurate ('in complex cases the qualitative relation of energy dispersal to entropy change can be so inextricably obscured that it is moot'). Opabinia regalis 16:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Change to keep for now and rehash the appropriate presentation of this material elsewhere, per FrankLambert's list of textbooks and the fact that the worst of this article was apparently added by one of the delete voters. This still strikes me as a particularly egregious Lie-to-children but if it's notable, so be it. Opabinia regalis 05:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. Deletion is not the way to go, as this idea is becoming important in the way entropy is taught to chemists. I am inclined to keep until we can sort out a better way to incorporate this material. It may be out of line with textbook physics but it is not out of line with current textbook chemistry. --Bduke 17:09, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Can you point to a common textbook that uses this concept? The article claims it has been adopted in textbooks but doesn't cite which ones (never a good sign). I haven't run across this idea before but I hope that, if it is becoming common, the article is just a poorly written explication of it. I can't see that this concept is even intelligible for any serious application. Opabinia regalis 22:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually, that info is forthcoming...had Jacobi not been so hasty in nomming this article ( less than 24 hours after Sadi created it), the issue of publication history would have been resolved without all of this nonsense. •Jim62sch• 22:12, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment' Damn, seems like the idea has "infected" (to use Sadi's misplaced term) entropy: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].

That's fine, but where are the published and commonly used textbooks? A few professors mentioning the words "energy" and "dispersal" in the same sentence doesn't mean this idea has wide currency. Opabinia regalis 23:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Same sentence? They are used as either "energy dispersal" or "disperal of energy", in other words, as a phrase. •Jim62sch• 00:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're avoiding the question. Are there any textbooks in common use that explain entropy this way? Opabinia regalis 00:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the list as requested and have noted that these books are aimed at school and undergraduate use. Several appear to be in widespread use, and in particular "Atkins" published by Oxford University Press in the UK and W. H. Freeman in the U.S. seems to have international standing. In all cases the analogy is used to introduce entropy as part of a more comprehensive course. ..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I sympathise with the desire to find intuitive ways to explain entropy, which is a thorny concept if I've ever encountered one. However, I can't see any use for this particular viewpoint except perhaps a couple sentences in another article: "One can roughly imagine a system's entropy as a measure of the degree to which its energy is 'spread out' or not available for useful work," etc. Unless I see evidence that this viewpoint has been adopted as the primary definition of entropy in a significant number of textbooks by different authors then I say we spread this article out itself. Wikipedia is not the place to hash out the merits of different vague analogies; let the people who are paid to do that try for that dubious prize. Anville 17:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Odd, but it seems that the idea doesn't "belong" to Frank Lambert after all Boise State, Chapter 18, Thermodynamics Part 1 •Jim62sch• 19:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See the list which has been added as requested: reputable science authors have adopted the analogy as suitable and as a significant improvement on their previous use of "disorder". ..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep -- this is not one person's view, and this crusade needs to stop. Interesting that the creator of the article has voted to delete it -- official sanction for suppression, perhaps? •Jim62sch• 20:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as patent nonsense and claptrap. Although entropy may seem confusing to young students, it has a very crisp and unambiguous definition. Actually, it has several; starting in mathematics, one has topological entropy, information entropy, Kolmogorov entropy and the like and these have all been shown to be essentially one and the same thing as the entropy measured by chemists and physicists. Entropy has a deep and broad and established theory, and trying to argue that its somehow "wrong" is declaring intellectual kinship to "Einstein was wrong about relativity". linas 04:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Special or General? The point is not that the theory of 2LOT, or of entropy, is wrong, but that it has been taught incorrectly (the same has been true of both theories of relativity). Entropy is taught as equaling (an increase in) chaos and disorder -- and that definition is patent nonsense.
• As an aside, relativity never became what Eistein had hoped -- the great theory of everything. Within a generation, relativity was in a battle with quantum theories, with Einstein strongly opposing these theories for quite some time. Today they live side-by-side in relative (no pun) peace, although string and M-theory cast some additional doubts. (Oh, BTW, less than 120 years ago the mantra would have been, "that's like someone saying Newton was wrong about his three laws". Well, in a sense he was -- relativity better explains the same phenomena -- and yet his formulae are still used today because they are close enough for general purposes.) •Jim62sch• 17:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, perhaps a more focused critique: The article itself has objectionable language:

... he proposed that the confusing portrayal of entropy as "disorder" be abandoned.

!? Entropy as the logarithm of "disorder" is the fundamental definition entrenched in mathematics, and in mathematical physics, and in information theory, and etc. How can this be abandoned? What is it to be replaced by?

In this approach the statistical interpretation is related to quantum mechanics, ...

This appears to be a vacant, mumbo-jumbo appeal to mysterious science. Yes, its true that, in deep, subtle ways, statistical mechanics resembles quantum field theory; however, the exposition of this resemblance is pretty much beyond the reach of any undergrad, much less a beginner chem student. What purpose does such an appeal serve, other than to try to bask in the glow and aura of quantum mechanics?

The subject remains subtle and difficult, and in complex cases the qualitative relation of energy dispersal to entropy change can be so inextricably obscured that it is moot.

Ouch. Classic weasel words, frequently found in the apologia of cranky writings. Can usually be paraphrased as "the author got confused by the difficulty of the topic" or "the author has no clue what they're writing about". Highly inappropriate for beginning students.

And finally, the idea seems ambiguous for the classic textbook example of a refrigerator. Say I'm releasing hot compressed gas through an expansion nozzle. So I'm "dispersing energy", right? The gas cools. Have I increased entropy? Decreased it? I don't know what this intuitive idea is supposed to offer here ... linas 05:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A combination of my earlier paraphrasing for the entropy article and Sadi's edits in creating this fork has evidently lost the clarity which appears in the much longer explanations on Lambert's websites. Article revised in a first attempt to address such misunderstandings. ..dave souza, talk

• Delete -- the viewpoint is worthy of note, and not OR (in the WP sense). It has been presented in journal articles, taken up as a general gloss by some chemistry textbooks, and is widespread on the web. ("Entropy can be roughly understood as disorder; or as dispersal of energy"). Both of these rough understandings are worth a short discussion of their usefulness, applicability and limits, and/or a discussion of how a more sophisticated understanding of entropy may require words to be specifically defined in perhaps rather non-intuitive ways. However, the place for that discussion is in the main article on entropy, and it should be possible to summarise it well in a few lines. Devoting a whole article to it here is inappropriate overkill; equally inappropriate would be to try to ghettoise all discussion of it to here. The existence of this article is both unnecessary, and unhelpful. The discussion should return to the main article. Jheald 04:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment You may have a point regarding where the discussion should take place, however, given the manoeuvring by User:Sadi Carnot, one wonders if it wouldn't be best to leave the article as it is until the issue is resolved. See, Sadi Carnot created the article as a way of moving the discussion off of the entropy page, then voted to delete the article he created -- seeking, apparently, an official sanction for squelching a view with which he disagreed. •Jim62sch• 17:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. As I look at the article, besides the one reference to a 19th-century work by William Thomson, there is no citation of anything but Frank Lambert's own work. Wikipedia should report dispassonately on theories that have already managed to attain credibility. If the struggle is happening in the Wikipedia talk columns, then there must not be enough citations from the outside world. Come back when the struggle is won elsewhere. EdJohnston 16:30, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article you looked at was a POV fork and attack article created by an opponent of the ideas. Revisions have made it clear that it is a teaching approach, not in any way an alternative theory. Others have used similar approaches involving "dispersal", for example Teaching about Energy Degradation is a Spanish work package prepared for the European Commission. Pleas reexamine the article as revised. ..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep subject to a thorough rewrite. As Jheald rightly says this approach does not contravene WP:NOR. As an introductory teaching method presented as being fully compatible with standard textbook stuff it has achieved notability both on the web and in a significant number of chemistry textbooks. I agree with Jheald that there should be a brief discussion of the usefulness and applicability of this method in the main entropy article, pointing to any critical analysis and limitations of this approach as well as noting what usefulness it may have for those who find thermodynamic entropy easier to understand when directly related to energy and temperature. This page has been cobbled together by "Sadi Carnot" as part of a vitriolic campaign to hide these ideas. It misrepresents the ideas at present, but can be improved to give a reasonable properly sourced explanation of the merits and demerits of the approach in more detail than is appropriate on the main page. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and WP:NPOV requires that notable views should be represented fairly, proportionately and without bias, not censored so that only a particular orthodoxy is shown. ....dave souza, talk 18:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• With an assist by User:PJacobi as well. Are ideas not in keeping with what one was "taught" (however incorrectly) that scary? Sad, really. •Jim62sch• 20:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep on the condition that the textbooks and courses incorporating the idea are cited as evidence of notability / acceptance of the theory by academia. Sockatume 19:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See list in revised article. ..dave souza, talk 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. This way of presentation doesn't make much sense. The text defines entropy as "energy dispersal", but it doesn't say what exactly "dispersal" means. More than once, this issue was discussed in Talk:Entropy, but Lambert wasn't able to give a precise definition. It seems that he gives the word "dispersal" different meanings in different cases, so that the connection between entropy and "energy dispersal" becomes not a scientific one, but only psychological. Because of the ambiguity in what is meant here by "energy dispersal", this content is not encyclopedic so it shouldn't be included (and it doesn't even matter whether it's original research or not, or whether it's appropriately referenced or not). Yevgeny Kats 20:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• And yet the term is good enough for these sites/cites. Why is that? And why do you recoil so at the term? [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. •Jim62sch• 21:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

This AfD debate has been rushed through on the basis of a new article cobbled together by "Sadi Carnot", an opponent of the ideas presented. He included extracts from the entropy article including a wildy innaccurate statement presented as though it represented the "dispersal" view which had actually been introduced to the entropy article at 03:13, 6 October 2006 by 172.129.75.141.[14] and [15] He also included an unsourced biographical claim about Lambert conceiving "of a new view" which contradicts the presentation made by Lambert on his website, so I have commented it out. I've revised the intro to give a more neutral description in line with the cited sources: this is just a start on the revision work needed to make this an accurate well sourced article. I would hope that those who based their comments on the previous article will examine the evidence and reconsider. ...dave souza, talk 22:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The article is well sourced and I see no evidence of OR. JoshuaZ 23:39, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Undecided - First of all, I am not a Wikipedia lawyer. The only thing that interests me is the validity of the theory. As it is presented in the web pages and the peer-reviewed journal articles, "energy dispersal" is never precisely, quantitatively defined and so its relationship to entropy change is never precisely described, at least for the entropy of mixing case, which presents the deepest problem for the theory. If energy dispersal could be defined satisfactorily, the question of whether it would give the theory a more solid grounding or less, I don't know right now. If I had to bet, I would say it would not (forgive me Frank Lambert).

As to the question of whether to keep the article or delete it, this is a lawyers question. In my mind, if the theory has gained as much currency as some have suggested, it would be worth keeping. If not, it should be deleted. If 70 percent of the people doubt the theory of evolution, that is enough to warrant a Wikipedia article discussing their doubts, whether those doubts are well founded or not. PAR 04:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Comment: As far as i know, the number of biologists that doubt the theory of evolution is in the region of <0.5%. We have a whole suite of articles outlining the creationist position. Are we really up to 70% of all people doubt TOE? David D. (Talk) 15:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete for lack of notability - I've spent years studying entropy and never run into this vague notion of "entropy as energy dispersal". There are reasons why. One is that entropy is a fundamental notion that does not presuppose any concept of energy for its definition; the concept of "energy" or "Hamiltonian" applies to classical or quantum systems with time translation invariance", while "entropy" applies to all classical and quantum systems. So, no complete definition of entropy can refer to energy. Another is that no way of quantifying "energy dispersal" is given (at least not here), and entropy is above all a quantitative concept! In short, the explanation of entropy doesn't really explain the concept, so few people use it. I see only references to a few poorly known texts. John Baez 04:35, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  "I've never heard of it" is a very poor basis for a delete position. KillerChihuahua^?!? 12:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  That very much depends on the person who states it. --Pjacobi 12:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  Point taken. However, the list of textbooks and publications citing the work suggests Baez simply missed this. I'm with Opabinia regalis, above - whether its a lie-to-children, a notable presentation, or something else does not make it non-notable. KillerChihuahua^?!? 13:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: for everyone to note, two of those who want to keep Lambert's article and related theories (e.g. "entropy=dispersion not disorder"), i.e. User:Jim62sch and User talk:Dave souza, seem to be only doing this, based on their edit and comment history, for intelligent design purposes, what ever they are? On the second law of thermodynamics talk page, for example, User:Dave souza has stated that the second law of thermodynamics as stated by Rudolf Clausius in 1854, i.e. “heat cannot of itself pass from a colder body to a hotter body”, is now incorrect due to recent talk page discussions. He seems to think that Lambert's website theories are the correct ones rather than Clausius and he is the one that started this mess by adding 9 ref links to Lambert's website. Whatever the case, Souza’s views and edits are not scientific. Moreover, today I looked through my collection of entropy-related textbooks (70 thermodynamics textbooks, 7 physics textbooks, 5 biochemistry textbooks, 4 chemistry textbooks, 3 physical chemistry textbooks, and others) and the “energy dispersal” concept is not there neither is Frank Lambert. This is entirely a sideline website theory that happens to have good search rankings because the author has bought up all of the URLs related to entropy, e.g. ‘entropysimple.com’, ‘entropysite.com’, ‘2ndlaw.com’, ‘secondlaw.com’, etc., and in which he uses these to push out his own personal theories. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with that. But, self-published website theories do not justify scientific correctness nor reasons to be included into the Wikipedia entropy article, which is from where all this mess is stemming. --Sadi Carnot 10:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sadi, you have been warned before about personal attacks. Further, as you posted this after the long list of textbooks and notable papers was listed at Talk:Entropy#Non-notable?, you are aware it is NOT "self-published website theories". You are on thin ice here between your tag use vandalism, personal attacks, attack article creation and misleading posts. I suggest you back off and consider your attitude a little - perhaps edit something you don't have such a strong personal bias about. KillerChihuahua^?!? 12:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: for everyone to note -- Wow, this is the first time I've ever been accused of being an ID proponent....generally speaking, the criticism of my position on ID is at the other polar extreme. For those of you who've not paid a visit to Sadi's (Libb Thimms') personal web page (accessable through his Wiki user page) I suggest that you do so -- quite the eye-opener, his article on evil and thermodynamics being especially so. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow, thanks for that link Jim, quite an eye opener. It appears that Sadi has started his own institute (Institute of Human Thermodynamics ) as well as started publishing his own journal. [16] He reminds me of Kary Mullis in many ways. Are his supporters here all from that institute too? David D. (Talk) 15:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You don't watch the mathematics and physics pages of Wikipedia much, if you raise this. And you don't watch anything much, if you accuse John Baez on this. And for the record: I consider User:Sadi Carnot's creation of both the articles Entropy (energy dispersal) and Frank Lambert extraordinarily stupid: The first one a POV-fork, the second one a WP:BLP of someone who for his own good would better be without a biography here. --Pjacobi 15:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Accuse? if you read below i agreed with Baez, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. And i am fine adding this back to entropy with the appropriate disclaimers. By the way, it would not have been stupid of Sadi to create the page if the long term goal was to delete it. When I see organisations such as the the Institute of Human Thermodynamics (basically a glorified dating service) i start too wonder about motives and vote stacking. Why don't you educate me about the events on the mathematics and physics pages, one can't be everywhere at once. David D. (Talk) 15:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment The long-standing gloss of explaining entropy as a measure of "disorder" has been used so often by proponents of ID to confuse or mislead (eg:life shows so much order, there must have been a designer, otherwise it would conflict with the second law), that it is understandable if heartfelt opponents of ID are attracted to discussions of entropy that promote a focus on the "dispersal of energy" instead. Because life (and evolution) certainly disperses energy - so it's much more obvious that if ID people try to run this argument they don't have a leg to stand on. That I think is why ID opponents are so strong about wanting to see dispersion of energy as the way to roughly understand entropy (and it does seem much more tangible, too). But for all the reasons discussed in Talk:Entropy:Archive4 and elsewhere, IMO the "dispersal of energy" talk is a shortcut too far. Instead, IMO the thing to stress is that the (spatial) dispersal of energy by living things far outweighs the apparent increase in their internal order as they grow. Both contribute to the accounting for the second law. "Disorder" (or "disorderedness"), if used as a gloss for entropy, has a very specific meaning, namely "the total number of microstates compatible with the macroscopic description", the microstates reflecting not only the internal orderedness, but also a single state of the external arrangement of energy too. So to anti-ID crusaders I say: you don't actually require a definition of entropy as "dispersal of energy" to knock this particular ID-sponsored confusion down. Jheald 23:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I'm going to be blunt, deal with it. Strawman? Red Herring? Whatever it is, it's bullshit. If you think my life revolves around the fucking crap IDists spew and that I want to find some way to explain entropy in a way that does not fit in with their delusions, then you yourself are deluded. The two discussions have nothing to do with each other (other than the strawmen erected by IDists, and apparently feared by others. Perhaps you lack the sufficient intellect to see that, but it is the case nonetheless. And quite frankly, even if the elementary teaching of entropy deals with energy dispersal, and even if this "plays" into the hands of the IDists, so fucking what? Their arguments are still wrong. One cannot simply decide that because a definition might inconveniently be used by someone else to further their inane gibberish is not a reason to exclude the defiition. Idiots will always find some succor for their stupidity in any theory, concept, idea, etc., you propose. Frankly, I'm tired of reading all this ooh-i'm-afraid-of-id shit. Grow some balls. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 23:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jim, if you care to read my comment, you'll see you appear to have the point I was making exactly back-to-front. It is entropy as disorder that IDists are misinterpreting. But that is no reason to blind yourself to shortcomings of descriptions of entropy exclusively as energy dispersal. Jheald 16:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a fair point that the need for a clear and accessible explanation arises when, for example, at Talk:Evolution/Archive 016#Kinds, 22:04, 14 May 2006, User:Sangil drew on his degree in Bioinformatics to advise us that "It is true the 2nd law deals mainly with energy. However, many other types of systems have used the 2nd law as a "guiding principle", since many natural phenomena appear to behave in a similiar way (i.e. that with time the disorder in a system increases). It is in this broader sense, and note in the strict energetical sense, that I refer to it." In trying to improve the Evolution article to deal with such reasoning I revisited the entropy and 2nd Law articles and found that they no longer provided a useful explanation. (see Self-organization and entropy for my proposed explanation) It's certainly important that articles should be fully correct at an advanced level, but the evidence is that "energy dispersal" is a recent but well established way of introducing the topic to beginners, something which Wikipedia also needs to achieve. To the extent that the approach has limitations, these should be made clear....dave souza, talk 14:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep see Talk:Entropy#Non-notable? for a long list of textbooks, etc using this concept. KillerChihuahua^?!? 12:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Some further remarks on entropy versus energy dispersal:

As I mentioned above, the concept of entropy is useful even in systems where energy is completely irrelevant. The concept of entropy does not logically depend on concept of energy. So, one can't explain entropy very well using "energy dispersal".

Conversely, one can't understand the tendency of systems towards "energy dispersal" unless one understands something called free energy. This quantity is related to entropy, but it's not the same: it's the energy minus the temperature times the entropy.

If you want to know why water is a crystal (low entropy) at low temperatures, but a gas (high entropy) at high temperatures, you need to realize that the water is not maximizing its entropy. It's minimizing its free energy. So, free energy is very important in chemistry.

And, to see why energy tends to disperse, you need to see that this process is how a system moves towards a lower free energy.

So, energy dispersal might be a good way to explain free energy, but not entropy. If some textbooks are using it to explain entropy, and this therefore merits a Wikipedia article, then I pray that the article say why this is a poor explanation, and point the reader to a better one. I can also suggest a lot of other articles on lousy explanations I've seen in textbooks. John Baez 15:12, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: If you can improve the article, and have verifiable sources which say "this is claptrap" or whatever, please do add them. We have an article on Intelligent design, which is... well, I'd say crap science but it isn't even science at all, so um.. We have an article on Kent Hovind. Notable, and definately nonsense. I'm not saying Entropy (energy dispersal) is nonsense, I'm simply saying that "This is wrong" ≠ "This should be deleted" as a one-to-one relation. KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- it might be a good idea to think this all the way through: If you want to know why water is a crystal (low entropy) at low temperatures, but a gas (high entropy) at high temperatures, you need to realize that the water is not maximizing its entropy. It's minimizing its free energy. If at its freezing point water has low entropy, and at boiling it has high entropy, and if the issue is the difference between minimization and maximization of potential energy, then it would seem to follow that at minimum little energy is being dispersed, and at maximum much energy is being dispersed. (Of course there's a chicken and egg argument in here, I just happen to think you have them reversed, especially as external energy is required to move from min to max). In any case, this method of teaching entropy is quiter sound, a good bit moreso than an argument that an attempt to measure distance more accurately than at the Plank length would cause a black hole.  ;) &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 23:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment What is the difference between this and James Kay's published ideas on dissipative systems? Wouldn't this idea of dispersal be the similar? Possibly we are getting caught up in the sloppy terminology and missing the notable idea by using pubmed with the wrong search terms? David D. (Talk) 15:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep this page is a description of a pedagogical approach that has been popularized to teach the concept of entropy. Whether is is right or wrong does not matter, it exists, it is not OR and students clearly find it useful since it is popping up in textbooks. If this is not part of the sum of human knowledge that wikipedia is trying to collate then I seriously think this encyclopedia is getting off track. i do agree that with John Baez that the weaknesses of this idea should be presented and be used as a springboard to more sophisticated ideas of entropy. In fact, to me, this seems like a primary reason for keeping the article. Deleting this page will not make the concept go away in the real world. David D. (Talk) 19:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge (back) into [[Entropy]] (but not where it claims to come from at Entropy#Ice melting example), and split out into Entropy (pedagogical approaches). A move to Entropy (pedagogical approaches) would be wrong. Keeping would be wrong. (It is claptrap, but my thermo textbooks are in storage, and might deserve a mention on faulty pedagogical approaches, anyway.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that it comes from Entropy#Ice melting example presumably relates to a "main article" link there added by "Sadi Carnot" when he set this up as a POV fork to denigrate the approach. I've removed that link and have considerably revised this article: your suggestion of moving an improved article to another title has merit, though "pedagogical approaches" seems rather clumsy. Evidently a number of eminent authors providing textbooks for those beginning to learn about entropy don't feel that it's claptrap, though the talk here is evidence that those educated in other systems can find it hard to accept. ...dave souza, talk 14:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete This viewpoint on entropy is better served as perhaps a line in another article but certainly not deserving of an article of its very own. What is the energy dispersal that the article is talking about anyway? It never gets around to defining it in such a way that a person can pin it down. It also fails notability.Bagginator 11:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The present article seems to belong somewhere, although it probably should be renamed. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per additional evidence of notability beyond claims of nominator presented above. FeloniousMonk 19:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.