Pick out some process which takes place in our day to day life and predict delta s and their spontaneity.?

Question

Pick out some process which takes place in our day to day life and predict delta s and their spontaneity.?

Answer 1

You can not do this. I can not do this. No one can actually do this type of a problem. Who ever assigned you this does not understand anything about thermodynamics or science and is probably regurgitating something from a misguided, and ill written text book.

S (entropy) is a thermodynamic state function that measures energy dissipation or shows you how much energy is lost during a process. It has nothing to do with our everyday experience of order/disorder which is a judgment call at best.

I can only imagine that this problem was developed by someone who still thinks that entropy and physical disorder are somehow related.

Its nonsense, and more than that its dangerous nonsense.

As an example, imagine a neat stack of textbooks; say 20, stacked on a desk according to height. Now imagine those same 20 text books scattered wily-nily on the desk.

The delta S for these two states IS ZERO. There is no difference in entropy between state one and state two! Why? No thermal or chemical change took place between those states, the difference in the energy levels of the atoms and molecules that make up the books did not change. They were rearranged in physical space (and you do not know which was the initial and final state).

Most importantly, delta S only shows a tendency for a spontaneous thermal process, but it is not the predictor of spontaneous processes, the free energy term (G) does that.

You can have a process with a delta S that is negative, but is still spontaneous because other terms (say delta H) drive the process.

The closest you might come is a process that you know is purely entropically driven. But many of these processes are not, as you say, taking place in our day-to-day lives.