Talk:Entropy (energy dispersal)

message: Has nobody noticed that putting a particular theory on a separate page is completely in contradiction to NPOV? 
The only way to do something of the sort within the rules might be to link to an external source.  It is really just the same as  Origin of species (Biology) and origin of species (biblical). And the article itself is not exactly encylopedic standards. And, 
coming from outside a little, perhaps changing this title to entropy (teaching methods) and including several alternate ways of presenting it might solve the problem of how to do it. I understand the difficulty of presenting exact theory in beginning courses, since I have been facing the challenge of presenting entropy to beginning Library & Inf Sci students, totally lacking a scientific background of any sort. (I use analogies.) DGG 05:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes – see Talk:Entropy#NPOV .. .dave souza, talk 10:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This change is a work in progress.  Entropy is a huge topic; the trend has been to use mini-articles with "links to main" on central page or to use "see also" and then put the rest on a separate page. --Sadi Carnot 12:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I have found this "dispersal" perspective used in Starr's Biology - the Unity and Diversity of Life textbook (1992), 6th Ed. and Atkins book The Second Law (1984).  Either Atkins is the primary source of this perspective or there is someone else who started this concept; in either case it would be good to find the correct historical basis for this idea.  I am going to make a short header article on the entropy page with a link to main.  
One issue we will have to correct on this page is the book list.  I have Ebbing's General Chemistry 3rd Ed. (1990) and Brown's Chemistry - the Central Science 9th Ed. (2003) and they both use the disorder perspective.  I am going to assume that the newer additions use the dispersal perspective?  Yet, I question this because I also have Sagan's book Into the Cool (2005) and it does talk about Frank L. Lambert (pgs. 82-84), but these four pages devoted to Lambert's ideas (out of 267 other authors cited in the book) talk about chemical kinetics, Murphy's law, and activation energy not about "energy dispersal"?  This leads me to question the entire list on this page that was submitted by Frank Lambert; maybe it is just a list of books that mentions his work, but not necessarily energy dispersal?  I will remove Sagan's book for now and we will have to clean the rest of the list to so to include only those books that mention energy dispersal specifically and cite the actual pages and reference sentences directly.  Perhaps Lambert can aid in this task?  I also don't like the words "teaching approach"...it doesn't make any sense.  --Sadi Carnot 12:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In order to support an assertion such as " a number of recent chemistry texts" blah blah,  we cannot resort to compiling the list ourselves since that constitutes original research.  The assertion is unsourced, and, as you already found, dubious.  The only kind of reliable source would be a review of recent pedagogical approaches in recent P.chem texts in a peer-reviewed journal.98.109.238.95 (talk) 03:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: New page cleaning tasks

message: User:Dave souza keeps writing stuff in this article using the word "student" all over the place.  This, by far, is not in line with WP:NPOV.  Moreover, since this whole dispersal debate began, I have read several of the historical books on this dispersal approach, and they do not repeat the word "student" all over the place.  Souza is obviously greatly influenced by Frank L. Lambert's websites.  Wikipedia is supposed to be written so to be available to a world audience of all ages.  I would suggest he clean this article accordingly. --Sadi Carnot 05:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point, thanks for picking this up. As suggested, I've copyedited the article to make it more general and in line with the historical background now shown. .. dave souza, talk 09:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks better, good work.  I've found that the English chemical engineer Kenneth Denbigh, in his 1955 textbook The Principles of Chemical Equilibrium, was the first to use the spreading and sharing of energy approach to entropy (although he doesn't use the word "dispersal" per se).  Later: --Sadi Carnot 19:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Student point of view

message: This concept of the audience is central to the whole concept of Wikipedia. We must be wary of it being dominated by academics of the wrong kind.    
:Peer review will sort you out there ;-). 84.227.234.163 (talk) 09:03, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: My difficulty with thermodynamics is just the opposite -- the concepts are often incomprehensible because they are not formulated in proper mathematical language. I had a similar difficulty with special and general relativity when I was only exposed to popular and heuristic explanations -- including the presentations in introductory university physics textbooks. Only the full math helped. As annoying as the math may be, leaving it out does not improve things. Once you have it, "all bugs are shallow" so to speak. 84.227.234.163 (talk) 09:03, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "The world audience of all ages ..."

message: All the external links pointing to one single place? Is this appropriate? DVdm (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frank Lambert all over the place 

message: I have never seen an objective survey of the recent textbooks' treatment of entropy.  This dubious unsourced assertion needs to be buttressed or removed.  Note: providing a list of such texts is original research.  This assertion needs a citation to a pedagogical survey article that supports this assertion.  And, "publication" by a print-on-demand service such as Cenpage or alphascript does not count.98.109.238.95 (talk) 02:38, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Lambert's survey is not independent, but he does list the textbooks and you can look at them to test whether his assertion that they now talk about energy dispersal is correct. Whether energy dispersal is a correct way of talking about thermodynamics or not, there is no doubt that many chemistry textbooks (in particular) see it as a  good way to introduce entropy to chemistry students. I have followed Atkins' "Physical Chemistry" since the first edition and used many of the editions to teach physical chemistry to chemistry students. He has certainly changed his approach over the years and the later editions certainly use energy dispersal. One problem is that people do not write papers comparing different textbooks. --Bduke  (Discussion) 07:24, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You are seriously mistaken on both main counts.  The characterisation of atkins's new edition was a gross distortion of that textbook, I edited it, but that shows how reliable the editors's assertions are.  Secondly, they do indeed write reviews of textbooks, and usually of four or five at a time.  There are also reviews of pedagogical approaches as a whole.  But more importantly, Wikipedia policy is perfectly explicit about sourcing.  It is irrelevant whether Lambet'´s personal website is objective or independent or not.  It is a personal website and so cannot be used to support an assertion on Wikipedia.  Policy is also fairly explicit about use of stray scholarly articles. Such articles in isolation do not constitute a reliable source since they do not show what level of acceptance by the general scholarly community in that field obtains for the assertion at hand.  The paragraphs which are little more than digests of Lambert's own website, and with no other source than his posts on that website, should be removed as soon as possible.  The paragraphs which rely on only a few papers should also eventually be removed.  98.109.238.95 (talk) 14:08, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  /* Solution: entropy as energy dispersal */ unsourced assertion, dubious 

message: Some of the qualities or strategies that can be good for a textbook or a class lecture can be totally inappropriate for an encyclopedia article.  For this reason, the mere fact that something has been found useful by some students is (almost) totally irrelevant to our decisions here.  In general, a good pedagogical strategy might be to first present a simplification, an imprecise "big picture" slogan, with a clear example, and put in the careful details slowly, in stages.  But this is the wrong approach for an encyclopedia article.  Or, even more drastically, I have seen reputable engineering textbooks never get around to dotting the i's and crossing the t's, acting as if every probability distribution were absolutely continuous.  
But an encyclopedia article is supposed to be a reference.  It is not our duty to teach beginners, although one hopes they can learn something.  Beginners can find out what the keyword is about, and be steered to good textbooks.  The duty of a reference work is to clearly state everything correctly in light of the accepted state of the art. Usually, reference work is for someone who already knows something but is wondering about, e.g., whether their text might have made a mistake, might have left something out, maybe is old-fashioned, what is the current state of the art, etc.  Too many science contributors to Wikipedia are trying to rewrite the articles in the image of their favourite textbook, i.e., what worked for them when they learned it.  This is its own peculiar kind of lack of npov.  So, if something in an article is too dense or "legalistic" or convoluted for a beginner to grasp it the first time they read it, tough.
So even without knowing that the "energy dispersal" point of view is scientifically incorrect, we should be able to decide to delete this article simply on the grounds of the inappropriateness, for an encyclopedia, of an article about the pedagogical effectiveness of an approach to teaching entropy.  This article reads as if someone were trying to write a review article for a chemistry pedagogy journal.  Well, go ahead and write it and then submit it to a journal.  Wikipedia is not for original research or synthesis, which is what is being included here.98.109.238.95 (talk) 21:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encyclopedic style vs. textbook style 

message: I've added a template at the top about the title.
This article, as stated in the lead, is about a method or approach for teaching the topic of entropy; it is not an article about the topic of entropy itself.
The title makes it appear to be an article about Entropy itself, but distinguished as a different meaning or concept of Entropy that needs to be qualified with "(energy dispersal)" for disambiguation of the topic.
DavRosen (talk) 07:10, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair point. What do you suggest, "Energy dispersal (entropy)"? "Energy dispersal interpretation of approach to teaching entropy"? "Entropy as energy dispersal"? Cesiumfrog (talk) 13:07, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  I proposed the alternative title Energy dispersal pedagogy for thermodynamic entropy in the box at the top of the article;  Energy dispersal approach to teaching entropy isn't bad, though "approach" sounds less encyclopedic to me, and I think it's useful to make it clear that it's for the concept in thermodynamics, not for example in information theory.   As it stands now, this article is a bait-and-switch, its title making it appear to be an article about a scientific term/concept/quantity but then stating in the lead that it's about "an introductory method of teaching the thermodynamic concept of entropy" instead, which is quite a different type of topic.  DavRosen (talk) 17:04, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

text: I think that's too cumbersome for a title. I propose Energy dispersal pedagogy (entropy) or more simply Energy dispersal (entropy). Cesiumfrog (talk) 08:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's more important that it's a pedagogy for entropy than the name of this one particular pedagogy. DavRosen (talk) 14:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

text: When you add mergeto templates, it is normal to add mergefrom templates on the articles proposed as receiving the merge. The "Discuss" link also points to the talk page of the receiving articles. Both are probably not appropriate here, but the tags should be edited to direct the discussion here. I do not have time now. --Bduke  (Discussion) 00:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I have altered the mergeto links so they point to a discussion here as I suggested above. However, I do not think that a merge is appropriate to any of the three articles, although there could be a mention there. I would be more in favour of moving the article to either Entropy pedagogies or Approaches to teaching entropy (thermodynamics) as suggested above, with the article then widened and improved to discuss all the notable problems with teaching entropy and how the problems have been addressed. These problems are significant and they have been noted. The energy dispersion way is particularly important for teaching chemists. --Bduke  (Discussion) 07:14, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  At least change the title -- it does not accurately reflect the subject of the article 

message: Come to think of it, the article should really be about any and all notable Entropy pedagogies or Approaches to teaching entropy (thermodynamics).  That would be a step towards making the article more neutral.  Right now there may be only one such approach written up, but others (e.g. "disorder") can be mentioned in the lead, and there can be a stub for a section on each that someone can expand. DavRosen (talk) 15:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broadening the scope of this article to include more than one point of view 

message: I've placed templates at the top of the article suggesting three articles into which I believe this material should be merged.  A variant approach to teaching entropy should reflect a variant approach to the concept of entropy as reflected in the main article(s).  Even if it continues to be about a "teaching approach", it can still be merged into the other article(s) as such. In the latter case, the title change suggestions and broadening of the scope of this article will apply to the scope and naming of sections or subsections within the target articles.  The title change and/or scope broadening suggestions also still apply to the present article until or unless a merge occurs. DavRosen (talk) 15:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: When you add mergeto templates, it is normal to add mergefrom templates on the articles proposed as receiving the merge. The "Discuss" link also points to the talk page of the receiving articles. Both are probably not appropriate here, but the tags should be edited to direct the discussion here. I do not have time now. --Bduke  (Discussion) 00:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I have altered the mergeto links so they point to a discussion here as I suggested above. However, I do not think that a merge is appropriate to any of the three articles, although there could be a mention there. I would be more in favour of moving the article to either Entropy pedagogies or Approaches to teaching entropy (thermodynamics) as suggested above, with the article then widened and improved to discuss all the notable problems with teaching entropy and how the problems have been addressed. These problems are significant and they have been noted. The energy dispersion way is particularly important for teaching chemists. --Bduke  (Discussion) 07:14, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging this article into other(s) 

message: I noticed that the article doesn't include a mathematical definition of entropy as energy dispersal anything at all. Not so much as a variable, equal sign, or digit. That's a pretty convincing indictment. 84.227.234.163 (talk) 22:58, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: I can't see any numbers or how it works

message: Regarding the comments about not targeting students and/or beginners, I disagree. Although Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a textbook, it is also supposed to be accessible to the general reader.
From WP:NOT, specifically WP:NOTJOURNAL:
7. Scientific journals and research papers. A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead (and also maybe the initial sections) of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic. While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text.
8. Academic language. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not just for academics...
I think about half of WP doesn't follow that strict definition! However, this sociologist's idea is as follows: Could gas dispersal be given as an *example* of entropy under conditions of zero gravity, and then explain why it doesn't hold otherwise? Use it as part of an example in the main article rather than as a separate definition? Although examples are discouraged somewhere I read, in the interests of making the definiion clear to the general reader, I think it is legit. Thoughts?  Peacedance (talk) 22:26, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia is not a textbook, but is for a general audience - A new idea 

message: http://www.eoht.info/page/Energy+dispersal does a much better job of explaining the background of this idea than the Wiki page. It seems to me that since is really just a footnote within the main topic of "entropy", it really needs to be approached from a more historical point of view, focusing not on what entropy MEANS (we all know what it means, it is in the main article) but WHY some people would advocate a different approach, with some details on the problems this may cause with the correct interpretation of the term. Right now the whole article is written in the form of a proposal, violating Wikipedia guidelines. It needs to be rewritten and refocused in a manner similar to how the linked article is. Vree65 (talk) 00:09, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: As noted by one commenter above; the 'energy disposal' metaphor is especially useful in Chemistry, but has not been adopted as widely in Physics - which is my main area.  I think Harvey Leff actually first wrote about 'spreading and sharing of energy' before Lambert's crusade to move Chemistry textbooks to a different metaphor more strictly thermodynamic.  But Frank Lambert was highly successful at convincing the Chemistry crowd that disorderly behavior was not a suitable measure for entropy in that field.  I think the 'entropy is disorder' notion has caught on because Science popularizers like Sean Carroll like the fact that the tendency toward entropy is easy to demonstrate.  But I agree with Leff and Lambert that it is wrong to equate this tendency with increasing thermodynamic entropy - and I think this is true even in Physics.
I will start by crafting a new lead paragraph off-line, and possibly make a subtitle change.  I will readily admit that I exchanged e-mails with Profs. Lambert and Leff on at least a few occasions discussing Physics questions.  I have cited one or both in at least a few published papers, made mention in talks at conferences, and had lively discussions about their work with other physicists as well.  The 'energetic dispersal' idea plays extremely well in the context of "energetic causal sets" which I had the pleasure to hear Lee Smolin lecture on at GR21 and briefly discuss after.  So this article could be way more general.  But people are enamored of the 'disorder' concept.  In his Scientific American article; J. Miguel Rubi carefully explains that it is the continuous progression of thermodynamic entropy which creates the alternating appearance of order and disorder in the mesoscopic regime.  
But the Sci Am editors featured a headline on how the 2nd law of thermo is broken - which is not what the article says at all.  Go figure.
More later, Jonathan JonathanD (talk) 04:09, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  I can help here