Skip to main content

All Questions

2 votes
0 answers
53 views

Planck on the entropy of light

While reminiscing of his discovery of the quantum of action Planck writes in his "Scientific Autobiography" [1]: Thus the nature of entropy as a measure of probability, in the sense ...
hyportnex's user avatar
  • 19.8k
6 votes
5 answers
494 views

Light Polarizer and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

I have stumped myself with a thought experiment of my own devising. Suppose I take a beam of wholly depolarised, but otherwise plane wave light. Its von Neumann entropy per photon is $\log(2)$ nats ...
Selene Routley's user avatar