Don't Blame Me, Blame Entropy!

As most of you are probably wondering what I mean by my title, let me go ahead and explain it to you. It is a quote from my Chemistry professor, Dr. Baba. Entropy is defined as the amount of disorder or randomness of a system and its surroundings, which usually refers to chemical reactions and phase states (you know, solid, liquid, and gas; gases have the highest entropy and solids have the least). But he also defined entropy in a larger sense, in that everything on Earth involves entropy. He said that the entire universe tends to become more and more disordered, having more entropy. To illustrate this, he used the example of a bedroom:

The average bedroom, even after you have thoroughly cleaned it, made the bed, etc. tends to become more disordered over time, mostly just by either getting dirty or messy (bed unmade, clothes strewn about, etc.). This is due to the fact that randomness or disorder (higher entropy) is favored by the universe, because it takes less energy. If you think about that logically, it really is true! The only reason rooms get messy is because it sometimes takes too much energy to clean it, at least in some people's minds. In order to counteract this high level of entropy, energy must be added into the system; in the bedroom case, this is the energy of the person cleaning it up. This leads to the quote in the title, "Don't blame me; blame entropy," which was just a humorous way of my professor justifying the fact that things become disordered.

Ok, now that I've thoroughly explained the title (and possibly confused many of you) I will segue into why that title applies to me. This is because my life, in general, has a great amount of randomness and disorder, as I'm sure many of you can attest to also. I just thought this whole entropy discussion was too interesting, given the fact that completely relates to me! Recently this disorder and randomness was due to registration for classes for the Fall 2006 Semester. I think I already blogged about which classes I wanted to take, but that report was premature, as I hadn't actually made out that schedule. My registration day was on Monday at 3:30 PM, and I was very nervous about this. This was because Monday was the second to last day of registration, and no one could guarantee that my classes would still be open when it was my turn. So throughout last week and the beginning of this week, I was checking the classes online to see how they were filling up, and whether or not any of them had been closed. This caused a lot of frustration and anxiety on my part, even though the classes weren't filling up quickly at all. I still had to be sure that I got those classes, since some of them are necessary to be taken at this point of my college career.

The other thing that was making me nervous was that my registration time was in the middle of my Biology Lab class! This would be a problem, unless I could convince my professor to let me out, register, and then come back to class. So I e-mailed him on Sunday morning telling him about my predicament, and right after class started on Monday I reminded him, since he hadn't responded to my e-mail. He told me that I could register from the classroom computer if I wanted, since we are able to either register online (which is more involved, but also more convenient) or in person at the Registrar's Office (which is less involved, but also less convenient). So I didn't hesitate and quickly got everything done, and surprisingly didn't have any problems getting into any of my classes! So all that worrying was for nothing, once again.

Other than registration, classes have also been providing the extra entropy in my already hectic life. By this point, all of my classes are in full gear, getting tests, quizzes, papers, and projects out of the way. Let me run down a few of the events that will transpire after the Easter Break: Chemistry test, Biology Lab test, Biology test, Spanish presentation, Philosophy paper, possible quizzes (Spanish, Philosophy, Biology Lab), and not to mention the work that is already going on in those classes. AHHH!!! But it will all be handled and dealt with accordingly, so I don't predict that there will be any major problems.

For some good news, let's turn to Chemistry Lab! We have been doing something called Qualitative Analysis for the last two weeks, and it really is going well. QUAL, as we call it, is different from all our other experiments, since numbers and calculations aren't involved. It is simply performing tests on known, and later unknown, solutions to determine the presence of certain ions. (ION = a positively or negatively charged particle, resulting when an atom of a given element gains or loses electrons) We add components to these solutions, which form compounds, precipitates (solids that fall out of solution), or have color changes, and from this we can determine which ions are present in solution. It really is a lot of fun for me, even though it can be very time-consuming. But, according to my instructor, the fact that I am thorough and cautious really pays off for me, since I have one of the highest grades in the class. This was also evident from our recent test, where I got a 94%, the second-highest grade in the class! YAY!

Well, as this is getting increasingly longer, I will stop for now. I'm sorry if I just totally confused everyone with the entropy discussion, but if you want a further explanation, I can try to answer your questions. Until next time, here's hoping that your universe is moving towards a lower level of entropy...