5 HN users recommended this explainer4 months2023–2024score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters say it made entropy intuition click and point to it in threads on energy, heat and equilibrium.
Veritasium's explainer on entropy, presented as one of physics' most important and least understood concepts. It uses examples such as heat engines and the sun's energy flowing through the Earth.
“This veritasium video explained it in a way that finally clicked for me” (HN, 2024)
For the longest time I had no real intuition of what entropy actually represented. This veritasium video explained it in a way that finally clicked for me: [this video]
It's not temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated) Temperature is precisely what leads to 'energy radiated' after all (see: black body emission). Temperature is not 'the leftover energy'. The Earth is broadly in equilibrium. It's more like delta_temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated) Any imbalance between energy in and energy out is what manifests as increase or decrease in global temperature. This Veritasium video gives a good idea of what we do get from the sun, if not 'net energy in': [this video]
This is a great video that touches on your point, the Earth must radiate the heat it receives to stay in equilibrium, even if it uses it to do work in the process. [this video]
Earth must radiate received heat to stay in equilibrium
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