003 - Fighting entropy?
Feb 14, 2021 · 2 minute readTags: 100DaysToOffload
Words: 437
Yay, entropy, it's all getting more uniform, you know.
So I was stood at the kitchen sink washing up. It's actually a very regular thing, as I tend to do most of the washing up in the household. Such is (my) life. Anyway, as I was washing up and generally making things look tidier, my mind wandered and I starting thinking about disorder, creating order from chaos, and the constant struggle to keep things tidy. Especially in the kitchen during marathon cooking sessions. Today was marmalade, soup and side-dish of cabbage & flageolet beans, a lot of which is destined for the freezer. For the avoidance of doubt, I did not cook these items.
A lot of this cooking is to convert vegetables that have been grown at the allotment (also not mine) into various dishes. And this creates quite a bit of disorder. In fact, it appears that:
- The plants (destined to become food) take soil, carbon dioxide et al and reduce entropy by growing into a plant. That uses sunlight as the main energy source.
- The grown plants are then brought to the kitchen and converted into dishes. This creates a fair amount of disorder in the peeling, chopping, cooking process. This disorder is the mess of cooking.
- Thus washing up and clear up takes place. This is where I tend to come into the picture. This, again creates order, ironically using the energy that comes from the various plants that are grown.
- The kitchen looks tidy, and I'm now tired.
What's this got to do with entropy? Entropy is a measure of the disorder in a system. More disorder equals more entropy. More ordered equals less entropy. So complex structures (plants and people) have lower entropy than, say, the same decomposed/dead plants and people.
So during my little daydream whilst washing and clearing, I remembered that ultimately life is a fight against entropy, and one that, it seems, inevitably all life will lose.
I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com
Comments are disabled for this page.