Sorry folks for the long delay in posting.. I am embroiled in a huge mess which resulted in a court case with the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) concerning my J2 gyroplane.. So I'll be brief..
Even though we have difficulty actually saying what 'energy' is.. we all pretty much understand what it can do. It can manifest itself as a property of matter (temperature, speed etc) or it can just propagate itself through space at the ultimate speed of anything as electromagnetic radiation. But even light has a small amount of 'momentum', which is calculated as mass x speed so it seems photons of light either have some mass or apparent mass. And of course everyone knows of Albert Einstein and his equation E = MC^2 which, notwithstanding atomic bombs, is a fairly deep concept.
Well that's all very fine but what about Entropy..? and who has even heard of Ludwig Botzmann let alone his most famous equation..
s = k.ln W (s = entropy)? Hardly any student at high school I have met is remotely aware of it! Yet it is just as important.. Progress in technology is constrained to meet several criteria but three substantial barriers are common to all..
(1) ENERGY.. we do not have an energy crisis, its an entropy crisis, plenty about but most of it is unavailable
(2) RELIABILITY.. how long can it hold off the law of increasing entropy
(3) COST.. can we afford it.
Which is why for instance electric cars struggle to make it in the market.. How to have enough 'light' batteries to give the power required with long enough service life and low enough replacement cost.. for like us, they will die.
If the understanding of entropy is of major importance.. why don't school kids know about it and why is the Wikipedia such a mess?
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