Valentines Day Research Special

I wrote this a long time ago, specifically on July 12, 2012, but seems appropriate to post for today:

Foreword

This writing goes beyond the scope of any general thermodynamics whether undergraduate or graduate level. While the reader is expected to have a foundation in thermodynamics, it is by no means necessary to enjoy the contents of this piece. There will be references to other fields, such as statistical mechanics or phase transformations, but for the most part this has been written to be accessible to all.

Introduction

Thermodynamics is governed by three laws, the most relevant to everyday life is that entropy, a measure of chaos, or more correctly disorder, always increases in the universe. Typically, a college student's response to his messy room is that it's natural as the room shifts towards a disorder state. Such interpretations of entropy results in an unclear definition of what exactly entropy is and when we should refer to it. We should clarify that for the purposes of this writing, that entropy should only be regarded as measure of disorder of states, and more specifically the most probable state is the most entropically favorable one. 

On the other hand, we are raised with this notion of true love as a result of childhood classics and Disney movies. If we apply the concept of true love or a soulmate in life, then, based on the current world population of 7 billion people, the probability of us finding this person is 1/7,000,000,000. It's more or less impossible! Yes in science there are other occurrences of even lower probability, but we digress. To find that one correct person for us is extremely unlikely, and application of statistical mechanics to such an idea would suggest that it is entropically unfavorable.

However, a controversial argument that arises is what happens if we do find this "true" love. The person that we would pack up our bags, move, and go the end of the world with them. The one who in a single instant causes us to change everything on how we approach life. If such an event does occur, it is very clear that such a person introduces large deviations from the norm for us. Our structured, ordered lifestyle is suddenly destabilized, and we again use that classic word: entropy. So to summarize the points we have stated, the process of finding the person is entropically unfavorable, but the actual event of finding the person is entropically favorable. How do these two terms balance each other out as we look at Equation (1).

Eqn 1 -   Entropy of Universe = (Entropy of finding True Love) + (Entropy of meeting True Love)

Note that there is a distinction between finding and meeting based in this context. Furthermore, this equation looks only at the final state of the reaction. In reality, a person needs to meet and date a few, several, or many individuals before they possibly find their love. Again, I have stated that this is unlikely as it is impossible for someone to date all 7 billion people, let alone meet all of them. The modified equation would be to add additional terms noting each and everything dating/relationship encounter we have in our lives. This will of course, vary from person to person depending on their lifestyle, as reflected by Equation (2).

Eqn 2 -   Entropy of Universe = (Entropy of finding True Love) + (Entropy of meeting True Love) + (Entropy of relationship One) + ... + (Entropy of relationship X)

What are the values for these additional terms? Well the easiest approach is two view two people as essentially two atoms. Initially we have two individual states which we are now attempting to bring together as a pair with a positive bond between them. Such a requirement requires energy input from both people in order for the reaction to occur. The eventual fact that these people do break up in their journey to find their true love immediately indicates that such pairings are not the lowest free energy state. An interesting point is that going into a relationship introduces entropy as we make sacrifices and adjustments to our lifestyles, but similarly, if a stable state is established, then breaking up results in further entropy as we find our lives in a further mess in attempting to pick up all the pieces. This is especially more prevalent depending on the length duration of the relationship, but this introduces a kinetics issue, which will not be discussed. To conclude, the entropy term to each of these relationships is positive. 

To be continued...

 

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Which obviously never happened =P