- It’s easy to wax poetic about entropy, but what is it? I claim it’s the amount of information we don’t know about a situation, which in principle we could learn. But how can we make this idea precise and quantitative? To focus the discussion I decided to tackle a specific puzzle: why does hydrogen gas at room temperature and pressure have an entropy corresponding to about 23 unknown bits of information per molecule?
- Elvis Presley in Germany (german-way.com)
When Elvis Presley walked off an army troop ship in Bremerhaven, West Germany on October 1, 1958, he was only 23 years old. It was his first (and only!) trip beyond the USA and Canada, courtesy of his local draft board in Memphis, Tennessee. His 17-month stay in Germany would be a pivotal period in his life and career.