The production of entropy, which means increasing the degree of disorder in a system, is an inexorable tendency in the macroscopic world owing to the second law of thermodynamics. This makes the ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2023 – Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. As a result, many people oversimplify ...

Physicists have upended a foundational law of materials science by heating gold to over 19,000°C — more than 14 times its melting point — while it remained perfectly solid. The study, published in ...

Physicists have employed a version of Maxwell's demon to reduce entropy in a three-dimensional lattice of super-cooled, laser-trapped atoms -- a process that could help speed progress toward creating ...

Protons are complicated. The subatomic particles are themselves composed of smaller particles called quarks and gluons. Now, data from the Large Hadron Collider hint that protons’ constituents don’t ...

The steady tick of a clock usually feels simple and dependable. Something swings or vibrates in a controlled rhythm and marks the passing of each moment. What you rarely notice is the hidden cost ...

A science experiment explores how entropy, often linked to disorder, can sometimes lead to structured patterns and organized behavior under the right conditions.

Physicists at Penn State University have devised a quantum equivalent of a famous 19th-century thought experiment, capable of creating order out of an array of randomly distributed atoms. Such highly ...