First-Year Seminars 110NT - Entropy

This course will explore the scientific, technological, and philosophical significance of the development of thermodynamics. The formulation of the laws of thermodynamics had profound implications for our understanding of the universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says, roughly, that the entropy of the universe is always increasing, and it had a deeply destabilizing effect on our Enlightenment image of a clockwork universe that is ordered and unchanging. We will study the laws of thermodynamics and their impact on science, art, literature, and society. Topics may include heat engines, reversible and irreversible processes, chaos, the heat death of the universe, Maxwell's Demon, information theory, and the directionality of time.

This course is not accepting new registrations