Cultured food by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Boltzmann constant by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
This is not a truly "fundamental" constant of nature like say the speed of light or the Planck constant.
Rather, it is just a definition of our Kelvin temperature scale, linking average microscopic energy to our macroscopic temperature scale.
The way to think about that link is, at 1 Kelvin, each particle has average energy:
per degree of freedom.
This is why the units of the Boltzmann constant are Joules per Kelvin.
For an ideal monatomic gas, say helium, there are 3 degrees of freedom. so each helium atom has average energy:
If we have 2 atoms at 1 K, they will have average energy , and so on.
Another conclusion is that this defines temperature as being proportional to the total energy. E.g. if we had 1 helium atom at 2 K then we would have about energy, 3 K and so on.
This energy is of course just an average: some particles have more, and others less, following the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/7696/how-do-i-distinguish-between-internal-energy-and-enthalpy/7700#7700 has a good insight:
To summarize, internal energy and enthalpy are used to estimate the thermodynamic potential of the system. There are other such estimates, like the Gibbs free energy G. Which one you choose is determined by the conditions and how easy it is to determine pressure and volume changes.
Entropy by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
OK, can someone please just stop the philosophy and give numerical predictions of how entropy helps you predict the future?
The original notion of entropy, and the first one you should study, is the Clausius entropy.
Video 1.
The Unexpected Side of Entropy by Daan Frenkel
. Source. 2021.
Video 2.
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 20. Entropy and Information by Sean Carroll (2020)
Source. In usual Sean Carroll fashion, it glosses over the subject. This one might be worth watching. It mentions 4 possible definitions of entropy: Boltzmann, Gibbs, Shannon (information theory) and John von Neumann (quantum mechanics).
Temperature by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
For scales from absolute 0 like Kelvin, is proportional to the total kinetic energy of the material.
The Boltzmann constant tells us how much energy that is, i.e. gives the slope.
TODO there was one which was relly good, can't find it anymore. One day.
Figure 1.
Life difficulty level meme with West Europe, East Europe, Turkey and Middle east
. Source.
The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library mentions that Paul Allen was interested in trying to create something like the "Final Encyclopedia" from this book. This is somewhat the same motivation for Google Books and Google's activities more broadly, as shown in their organise the world's information mission statement.

There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.