This World Wide Web page written by
Dan Styer,
Oberlin College Department of Physics and Astronomy;
http://www.oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/entropy/;
last updated 17 September 2024.
Technical note: To access the links marked (PDF) you must first download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader or Open Standard software.
Entropy as Disorder: History of a Misconeption (PDF)
Addendum to "Entropy as Disorder": What about Gibbs potential? (PDF)
Addendum to "Entropy as Disorder": Dismal decay before entropy (PDF)
Addendum to "Entropy as Disorder": Entropy as Freedom (PDF)
To counter the misconception that the messy room in Mark Thompson's cartoon (page 7) is indeed a high entropy situation, recall the discussion on page 3: Both the neat and messy room configurations are microstates, and all microstates have entropy zero.