Temperature and Disorder

[abskebabs]

Hi everybody. I would like to share with you something I have been mulling over on and off for the past few months. I remember during lectures when discussing temperature, I was intrigued to ask my lecturer if there was relationship between temperature and disorder. He gave me an answer bt I would be interestedto know how ppl on this forum would answer this question. I now that our idea of temperature only has sensible meaning when applied to randomly disordered enviroments, such as the a volume of gas.

 

I remember he mentioned such a thing as a "cold beam" of particles, with a considerable energy but very low temperature due to the "order" within the beam. Another useful question would be to consider what do we mean by order? I have a few ideas of my own, but I will leave this question open for the moment as I am interested in how you would interpret this.

 

I also know the concept of "heat" has a very important bearing in relation to Temperature, and we see that the amount of energy that is converted to heat increases woth every thermodynamic interaction, in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I would think that this concept, has a lot to do with what I have mentioned above, and is perhaps integral to the relation between temperature and disorder. I guess we have to be careful with words as Temperature is only given its usual definition in relation to large macroscopic systems, in which this notion of disorder can usually be taken for granted, allowing us to deal with the phenomenon covered statistically.(Also these "ordered scenarios" would just be isolated occurences within the pool of this larger classically thermodynamic closed system aka the Universe)

 

Finally, this leads me to my final question; Are there other notions of temperature applicable to microscopic or higly ordered pheomena, and do you perceive a need for these?

[abskebabs]

I must say I am slightly dissapointed. This thread has had 22 views, and 0 comments.... Does no one have anything to say anything on this matter, or is the title just not very exciting?

[Klaynos]

If I was asked that question, I would say that yes the two are related. But the relationship is not simple. And recomend that the person asking should read about entropy.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

 

Would not be a bad place to start.

[fredrik]

Finally, this leads me to my final question; Are there other notions of temperature applicable to microscopic or higly ordered pheomena, and do you perceive a need for these?

 

Interesting questions. Statistical mechanics is good stuff and I think as a student any effort you put into it is going to pay off later, when you get into QM and QFT, these things come back.

 

There are various interesting ideas in different field of research that many things can be given statistical interpretations "analogous to temperature", in terms of information fields. The concept of disorder is I think in general very fundamental, so hold that thought.

 

It might be worth spending a few thoughts even on gravity and time in terms of this, and decide for yourself if you think it makes sense or not.

 

/Fredrik

[fredrik]

Here is a link defining temperature (or beta = 1/kT) in terms of an energy derivative of the total possible microstates, possible with the macro constraints given.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_beta

 

Also check the various "statistical ensembles".

 

/Fredrik

[swansont]

Also look at the Helmholtz and Gibbs Free energy

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_free_energy

 

You can cool atoms with a laser because the laser light is a very low entropy entropy system.