• n. [热] 熵（热力学函数）

en-, 进入，使。-trop, 转，混乱，词源同turn, tropical. 即进入混乱状态，后用于科学术语，指无序状态的测量。

entropy

entropy: [19] The term entropy was coined (as entropie) in 1865 by the German physicist Rudolph Clausius (1822–88), formulator of the second law of thermodynamics. It was he who developed the concept of entropy (a measure of the disorder of a system at atomic or molecular level), and he created the name for it (on the model of energy) from Greek en- ‘in’ and tropé ‘turning, transformation’ (source of English trophy and tropical). The first record of the English version of the word is from 1868.
=> trophy, tropical

entropy (n.)

1868, from German Entropie "measure of the disorder of a system," coined 1865 (on analogy of Energie) by German physicist Rudolph Clausius (1822-1888), in his work on the laws of thermodynamics, from Greek entropia "a turning toward," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + trope "a turning, a transformation" (see trope). The notion is supposed to be "transformation contents." Related: Entropic.

It was not until 1865 that Clausius invented the word entropy as a suitable name for what he had been calling "the transformational content of the body." The new word made it possible to state the second law in the brief but portentous form: "The entropy of the universe tends toward a maximum," but Clausius did not view entropy as the basic concept for understanding that law. He preferred to express the physical meaning of the second law in terms of the concept of disgregation, another word that he coined, a concept that never became part of the accepted structure of thermodynamics. [Martin J. Klein, "The Scientific Style of Josiah Willard Gibbs," in "A Century of Nathematics in America," 1989]

1. In the business world, entropy rules.

在商业世界中，无序状态主宰一切。

来自《权威词典》

2. No matter how much of a misanthrope you are there is such a thing as entropy and it will catch up with you sooner or later.

不论你是一个多么不愿意与人交往的人，你迟早会被成千上百万条的信息包围。

来自辞典例句

3. The entropy density is constant ahead of the shock.

冲击波前方的熵密度是恒定的.

来自辞典例句

4. They can adopt conformations which lead to maximum entropy.

他们可以采取有最大熵值的构象.

来自辞典例句

5. The second law only allows us to calculate changes in entropy.

第二定律只能让我们计算熵的改变量.

来自辞典例句