2008-09-28

Entropy - what a difference a day made

It takes almost a whole month to clear up the sky between July 20 and mid August.

Now it takes less than a week to mess it totally up. This is the photo of the same location one day ago. My 'wishful thinking' was crushed, mercilessly. What a difference a day made... sigh

This is the second law of thermodynamic (and the concept of entropy) -- a simply illustration is that a drop of ink could dye a whole bathtub in seconds, but it is very hard to separate the ink and the rest of the water. To reverse the damage it takes energy, a lot more energy. e.g. days of thunderstorms for the smog, but in most cases the force of nature is not in place. (for that inked bathtub one can distill the water with a large 'coffee machine' very carefully)

This show what the challenge of undoing the pollution in China (and for that matter the rest of the world as well) will be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I, a chemical phycist, like the blog host's analysis. It makes so much sense. Yes the second law of thermodynamics. It is equally easy to pollute the mind; think about the hundreds of millions of Chinese throughout 1949 to 1976; no ethics; no morality; people against people. China at present is perhaps no better than what she was before 1949 (relative to other nations). The citizenry is no match against the Japanese and the Taiwanese or the Hong Kong; just look at the public spaces in China. The current system ("get rich quickly") brought the worst of the Chinese people and the worst of capitalism together. Such much like the meltdown of the Wall Street. China's growth is unregulated growth. Now we and our children will have to pay the price. The melamine-diluted milk is not the harbinger - bad thing happened before it, and worse man-made disaster could erupt any time