Andy Weir

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Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!
Andy Weir
The eternal bane of scientists everywhere. Put in simple terms, entropy is the tendency for systems to even out. Let’s say you’re magic and you use your ability to push all the air in an airtight room into one half of the space. Then you let it go. What happens? Whoosh! That’s entropy. Things “even out” over time. One place where this really causes headaches for scientists and engineers is with heat. Like everything else, heat tends to balance out. And when it does, it can really ruin your plans.
Scott and 542 other people liked this
Joe
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Joe
thermodynamics isn't a bane for all of us. it was the topic of my aerospace engineering masters thesis, so I'm pretty glad of it. that tendency to "even out' is why the device I investigated works. & …
Steph
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Steph
You just took a topic I knew nothing about and explained it in a way that I completely understood, which is exactly why The Martian has easily become one of my favorites. Thank you!
Melinda Benner
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Melinda Benner
Homeostasis. Osmosis.
Really not the bane of lifeforms ;-)
The Martian
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