I like the concept of the chemical potential from statistical mechanics.
The thermal potential (also due to entropy) causes temperature to spread outwards, hot to cold. This can be seen by solving the heat equation.
The chemical potential is that if you have a bunch of “stuff” (particles molecules etc) in one place, they will tend to spread out in space to maximize the entropy.
There’s no force or impulse making it happen, it’s just that you are far more likely to observe a system with “stuff” spread out than concentrated.
That’s why I love entropy. It’s not a force or even something super tangible. It’s more like the interface between the physical world and the abstract world of probabilities. The realest abstraction of them all.
The thermal potential (also due to entropy) causes temperature to spread outwards, hot to cold. This can be seen by solving the heat equation.
The chemical potential is that if you have a bunch of “stuff” (particles molecules etc) in one place, they will tend to spread out in space to maximize the entropy.
There’s no force or impulse making it happen, it’s just that you are far more likely to observe a system with “stuff” spread out than concentrated.
That’s why I love entropy. It’s not a force or even something super tangible. It’s more like the interface between the physical world and the abstract world of probabilities. The realest abstraction of them all.