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quark1005
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My friend and I were playing cards, and he was shuffling the deck. He claimed that the longer he shuffled, the 'more random' the arrangement of the cards would become. I argued that at a certain point the cards would be sufficiently disorganised such that they were in a state with no pattern whatsoever, or at least they would tend asymptotically towards some limiting value of disorganisation - logistic growth of disorganisation.
I compared a deck of cards to a thermodynamic system and noticed that the entropy - ie organisation of the cards increases with time. No matter how much you shuffle organisation will not increase, which I noticed is remarkably similar to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Upon reasearch I confirmed this was not an original analogy (http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/issues/1999/oct/abs1385.html")
This lead me to question: how does one quantify entropy? In states approaching the limiting value for disorganisation, is it possible to 'more disordered' (I argued not, stating that shuffling for two hours instead of a couple of minutes will not make the game any fairer - ie will not make the allocation of cards any more 'random')? Can I state at a certain point that a thermodynamic system, or my deck of cards, is 'random' / fully disordered etc?
Is a deck of cards a reasonable analogy to a thermodynamic system?
I compared a deck of cards to a thermodynamic system and noticed that the entropy - ie organisation of the cards increases with time. No matter how much you shuffle organisation will not increase, which I noticed is remarkably similar to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Upon reasearch I confirmed this was not an original analogy (http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/issues/1999/oct/abs1385.html")
This lead me to question: how does one quantify entropy? In states approaching the limiting value for disorganisation, is it possible to 'more disordered' (I argued not, stating that shuffling for two hours instead of a couple of minutes will not make the game any fairer - ie will not make the allocation of cards any more 'random')? Can I state at a certain point that a thermodynamic system, or my deck of cards, is 'random' / fully disordered etc?
Is a deck of cards a reasonable analogy to a thermodynamic system?
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