How does cleaning your room violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

Question

Someone posted something about cleaning your room violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics... and that just blew my mind, but the only thing is... I have no idea how it does violate it... can some please enunciate?

Answer 1

The second law claims : "The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value."

Your room is not a closed system ("isolated thermodynamic system"). There is no such violation.

Answer 2

It does not violate. Second law of thermodynamics talks about entropy i.e. disorder increasing. May be that person wants to say that if you clean your room, then things becomes more ordered and hence less entropy. But there is a fallacy in this argument.

According to the second law, the entropy of an isolated system cannot go down. But when you clean your room, then your room is not isolated. Therefore, there is nothing surprising if the rooms entropy goes down.

Answer 3

It doesn't, because you are adding energy to increase order (reduce entropy), so your room isn't a closed system.  But have fun trying out the excuse with your parents!

Answer 4

Get off the computer and go clean your room!!!  

Answer 5

It would only violate the second law if your room was to spontaneously clean itself.  

Your input in cleaining the room changes it from a closed system to one with an external energy input

Much like a refrigerator, in fact.  The second law says that heat does not flow spontaneously from a hot body to a cooler one, yet fridges cool things??

Their pipes at the back are much hotter than the internal parts.  The cooling motor and coolant fluids, and of course the electrical supply, make up the external part here, much in the same way your input constitutes the exernal part - an open system.

Answer 6

The so-called "natural order of things" is to increase in entropy.  It's the old "the entropy of the universe is increasing" thing.  Cleaning your room decreases the entropy of your room which is the opposite of the "natural order of things".

But of course the energy conversions required for your body to go through the motions of cleaning your room will produce an overall increase in the entropy of the universe.  Therefore there is no violation of the second law.