Statistical Mechanics Quotes

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

There are 15 main theories in physics, and we know all of them. If there weren't a finite number of theories, there would not be a point to physics.

All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.

I must confess that, at that time, I had absolutely no knowledge of the slowness of the relaxation processes in the ground state, processes which take place in collisions with the wall or with the molecules of a foreign gas.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

If there's no limit to how big the entropy can get, then you can start anywhere, and from that starting point, you'd expect entropy to rise as the system moves to explore larger and larger regions of phase space.

For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.

So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.

I'm trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it's interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It's all because of entropy increasing.

Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.

As soon as we step beyond the established boundaries of pure thermodynamic theory, we enter a trackless region confronting us with obstacles which even the most astute of us are almost at a loss to tackle.

The theoretical side of physical chemistry is and will probably remain the dominant one; it is by this peculiarity that it has exerted such a great influence upon the neighboring sciences, pure and applied, and on this ground physical chemistry may be regarded as an excellent school of exact reasoning for all students of the natural sciences.

Or in other words, why does disorder increase in the same direction of time as that in which the universe expands?

Molecular collision dynamics has been a wonderful area of research for all practitioners. This is especially true for those who were following the footsteps of pioneers and leaders of the field twenty years ago.

My own work in spin glass and its consequences has formed some of the intellectual basis for these interests.

I took a break from acting for four years to get a degree in mathematics at UCLA, and during that time I had the rare opportunity to actually do research as an undergraduate. And myself and two other people co-authored a new theorem: Percolation and Gibbs States Multiplicity for Ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller Models on Two Dimensions, or Z2.

Question: Who governs the governors? Answer: Entropy

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics.

Entropy is Janus-faced. Its upside surprises are redemptive and favorable to freedom. It is freedom of choice. But the carrier itself requires constant vigilance against entropic noise. Order is not spontaneous, but it is a necessary condition for all the surprises of freedom and opportunity.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

If we assume there is no maximum possible entropy for the universe, then any state can be a state of low entropy.

From a certain temperature on, the molecules 'condense' without attractive forces; that is, they accumulate at zero velocity. The theory is pretty, but is there some truth in it.