Luke_A_Somers comments on Entropy and Temperature - Less Wrong

26 Post author: spxtr 17 December 2014 08:04AM

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Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 18 December 2014 05:39:56PM 2 points [-]

Why did you only show the E(T) function for positive temperatures?

Comment author: calef 18 December 2014 08:31:04PM 1 point [-]

This is a good point. The negative side gives good intuition for the "negative temperatures are hotter than any positive temperature" argument.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 22 December 2014 03:41:59AM 2 points [-]

What gives a better intuition is thinking in inverse temperature.

Regular temperature is, 'how weakly is this thing trying to grab more energy so as to increase its entropy'.

Inverse temperature is 'how strongly...' and when that gets down to 0, it's natural to see it continue on into negatives, where it's trying to shed energy to increase its entropy.

Comment author: spxtr 18 December 2014 11:12:28PM 0 points [-]

No reason. Fixed.