James Clerk Maxwell · Science
How Maxwell, beyond his work on light, became a founder of statistical physics - describing the speeds of gas molecules with a law of probability, and inventing the ‘demon’ thought experiment that exposed the deep, still-debated link between entropy, information, and the arrow of time.
You learned that Maxwell helped found statistical mechanics, giving the distribution of molecular speeds in a gas, and that his ‘demon’ thought experiment appeared to let a tiny intelligent being violate the second law of thermodynamics by sorting fast and slow molecules. Explain why the demon seems to thr…
Leads to Ludwig Boltzmann.
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