Davey, Kevin (2006) Justification in Statistical Mechanics. [Preprint]
|
PDF
prob_stat_mech.pdf Download (89kB) |
Abstract
According to a standard view of the second law of thermodynamics, our belief in the second law can be justified by pointing out that low entropy macrostates are less probable than high entropy macrostates, and then noting that a system in an improbable state will tend to evolve toward a more probable state. I would like to argue that this justification of the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally flawed, and will show that some puzzles sometimes associated with the second law are merely artifacts of this incorrect justification.
Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
Social Networking: |
Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Creators: |
|
||||||
Keywords: | Probability, Statistical Mechanics | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
||||||
Depositing User: | Kevin Davey | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 30 Jul 2006 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 07 Oct 2010 15:14 | ||||||
Item ID: | 2853 | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
||||||
Date: | July 2006 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2853 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
View Item |