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At this point, you might be wondering what this has to do with entropy. Well, entropy is just a fancy word for ‘number of possible arrangements’. Entropy is a count of how many ways you can rearrange the ‘insides’ of a thing (its microscopic internals), while keeping its ‘outwardly’ (macroscopic) state unchanged. (Technically it’s the log of the number of these arrangements, but that’s just a mathematical convenience and doesn’t affect our discussion.)
It’s important to keep in mind that there’s no special guiding force driving these sheep to spread out and increase entropy. It’s just that there are fewer ways to keep the sheep concentrated, and more ways to spread them out. There are fewer arrangements where the sheep (energy) are concentrated, and more arrangements where the sheep (energy) are spread out. The first human passenger was also the first victim of balloon travel. Nearly two years after this flight, Pilâtre de Rozier died on June 15, 1785, when his balloon, filled with a combination of hydrogen and hot air, exploded during an attempt to fly across the English Channel, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. Advances in ballooningThe limitations of using air for flight were soon apparent; as the air cooled, the balloon was forced to descend. Keeping a fire burning onboard created the risk that sparks would set the bag on fire. Other means of keeping a balloon aloft were considered. On Dec. 1, 1783, less than two weeks after the first free flight, Jacques Alexandre César Charles launched a balloon containing hydrogen, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Just as when draught proofing a front door or your windows, there are many different products on the market designed to prevent heat loss from the chimney. It turns out, you're most likely to find the sheep more or less evenly split between the two farms (the states labelled 2, 3, or 4 on the graph). Meanwhile, states where the sheep are all in one farm (labelled 0 or 6 on the graph) aren't as likely. (If you don't see this as yet, press one of the blue buttons to speed up the simulation.) This isn’t just about ice cubes. Imagine you dropped an egg on the floor. Every atomic motion taking place in this messy event could have happened in reverse. The pieces of the egg could theoretically start on the floor, hurtle towards each other, reforming into an egg as it lifts off the ground, travel up through the air, and arrive gently in your hand. The movement of every atom in this time-reversed egg would still be perfectly consistent with the laws of physics. And yet, this never happens. The Origin of Irreversibility Going down this road leads us to some of the biggest unanswered questions about the cosmos: how did our universe begin, how will it end, and why is our past different from our future? Counting Sheep
The left and right ends of the graph represent states where the energy is mostly contained in one solid, and these become very unlikely. Meanwhile, the middle of the graph represents states where the energy is evenly distributed between both solids, and these become increasingly likely. Just like for the sheep, there’s no new law of physics that ‘tells’ the energy to spread out, or the entropy to go up. There are simply more ways to spread energy out than to keep it contained, so that's what we should expect to see happen. Higher entropy states are more probable than lower entropy ones. Today, balloons are routinely used in scientific investigations of the upper atmosphere. On occasion, specially designed high-altitude balloons have also carried people into the stratosphere; some individuals have performed parachute jumps in the extremely thin air. Balloons have been considered for space missions to Saturn, Venus and Mars, but so far, Earth is the only planet to have hosted these kinds of expeditions. How effective chimney draught excluders are depends on a couple of factors. The main thing you need to concentrate on is ensuring you buy the right sized product for your chimney. You will need to measure your flue carefully. In some cases, it will be necessary to have a draught excluder custom made to fit. Although fitting a chimney cap will help when it comes to preventing draughts and heat loss, using an additional draught excluder is still often a good idea.You should see that as you make things bigger, the graph of arrangements becomes more sharply peaked, centered around the most likely (i.e. the highest entropy) state. The Montgolfiers' next step was to test a balloon with a person as the passenger. On Oct. 15, 1783, the brothers launched a balloon on a tether withJean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a chemistry and physics teacher, aboard. He stayed aloft for almost 4 minutes, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Meanwhile, there are only 28 possible arrangements for the state we started off in, with all 6 sheep on the top farm (the bar to the right of the graph). So we're less likely to find the sheep in this lower entropy state.
On Jan. 19, 1784, in Lyons, France, a huge balloon built by the Montgolfiers carried seven passengers as high as 3,000 feet (914 m), according to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. So although the sheep are shuffled at random, over time, a pattern emerges. Some states are more likely than others. Why Sheep Spread Out You might’ve heard an explanation that goes like this: whenever you drop an egg, or melt an ice cube, or shatter a wine glass, you’ve increased the entropy of the world. You might also have heard the phrase, “ entropy always increases”. In other words, things are only allowed to happen in one direction — the direction in which entropy increases. Now, let’s assume the sheep are equally likely to be in any of these 462 arrangements. (Since they move randomly, there's no reason to prefer one arrangement over another.) In that case, we're most likely to find the sheep evenly distributed between the two farms, because this state has the most arrangements (it's the biggest bar in the graph). Say we’ve got three sheep. These sheep are shuffling about in a farm, pretty much at random. And this farm is split into three plots of lands.It is also important to choose a product that still allows for a degree of ventilation. This will prevent any damp issues from occurring. Some, such as The Chimney Balloon, feature small vents, while natural products made from wool are breathable by their very nature. On the left hand side of the sheep simulation above, you can watch the sheep shuffling between the farms at random. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to their motion.
The Chimney Balloon was started up by an engineer in the 1980s, although many other companies have since set up offering similar products. In 2017, The Chimney Balloon Co. was bought by Chimney Sheep Ltd and although the products they offer are different they now work together.You can see that, as you add more sheep or plots of land, the number of possible sheep arrangements grows exponentially.
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