If you start with a very specific state, for example a box full of balls that are sorted exactly by colour, then if you shake the box a little, a higher entropy mixed state will develop over time.

Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world ...

It is one of the most important laws of nature that we know: The famous second law of thermodynamics says that the world gets more and more disordered when random chance is at play. Or, to put it more ...