Entropy

duheaume
 March 06, 2008 at 03:24 PM posted in General Discussion
Any scientists here who know the Chinese for "Entropy"? - found 熵 in a dictionary, seems to have two alternative pronunciations, shang1 and di1, neither of these registered with our Chinese teacher.
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goulnik
 March 06, 2008 at 05:54 PM

very few people would know what entropy means unless they studied advanced physics or systems theory, that's certainly one concept I've had a hard time grasping.

熵 is made up of :

火 [huǒ] radical/semantic (部首/形旁)

商 [shāng] phonetic (声旁)

This is intimately linked to thermodynamics 热力学 rèlìxué (the study of heat energy :-) and disorder / chaos 混乱 hùnluàn

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RJ
 March 06, 2008 at 05:39 PM

熵 shang1 is entropy. Most english teachers wouldnt know what entropy was so I am not suprised that a Chinese teacher is unfamiliar with 熵.