by J Gerhard Müller

Abstract. The equivalence between information and entropy is used to interpret the entropy of a molecular gas as missing information about its internal state of motion. Our considerations show that thermodynamic information is principally composed of two parts which continually change in the course of gas-kinetic collisions. While the first part relates to energy carried by the individual molecules in the form of kinetic energy and in internal excitations, the second relates to information concerned with the location of the molecules within their own mean-free volumes. It is shown that this second kind of information is generated in gas-kinetic collisions and rapidly deteriorated and lost by quantum mechanical dispersion until it is re-gained in follow-on collisions. It is proposed that gas-kinetic collisions can be regarded as measurement processes in which information is continually gained, deteriorated and erased. As these processes occur naturally without any human intervention, it is argued that thermodynamic information—like entropy—fully qualifies as an objective physical quantity. View Full-Text

Keywords: information; entropy; molecular motion; measurement; information gain; information erasure

Department of Applied Sciences and Mechatronics, Munich University of Applied Sciences, D-80335 Munich, Germany

Entropy 2019, 21(11), 1052; https://doi.org/10.3390/e21111052

Received: 6 September 2019 / Revised: 13 October 2019 / Accepted: 25 October 2019 / Published: 28 October 2019

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Landauer Principle: Meaning, Physical Roots and Applications)

View Full-Text

Download PDF

Browse Figures

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/11/1052