If you have kids then you know that they can be like little "Maxwell Demons," exuding massive quantities of entropy at fantastic rates. For the thermodynamically challenged, "Maxwell's Demon" was an imaginary agent introduced in a thought experiment by the famous physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell hypothesized that the actions of such a demon might lead to a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This law states that in any closed system entropy always increases. If you're also a little fuzzy on entropy, then just think disorder, or better yet, chaos. As can be seen in these photos, if you regard my house as a closed system, then my two youngest kids always see to it that entropy never decreases.The physical quantities that seem to create the most entropy in my house are "toys" and "laundry." Here, laundry is to be considered any article of clothing that has been worn for at least 5 minutes, and or removed from a drawer and not replaced within an hour. Invariably, through a process that can only be revealed on a need-to-know basis, these articles make there way to the bottom of the basement stairs, where they accumulate until it becomes nearly impossible to pass by without twisting your ankle. Then they are moved to the hallway in front of the laundry room (as in the photo on the right), and eventually, hopefully, are laundered and put back in the correct clothes drawer, ready to begin the process anew. I shudder to think what fraction of our electric bill is due to laundry!
While laundry is a cyclical process, "toys" can be a more persistent source of chaos. They get taken out, distributed around the house, and often mixed together, so that it be
comes difficult to keep pieces of a given toy in the same area, or even floor. One then has a "melting pot" of trains, cars, balls, weebles, you name it. And once the weebles get mixed in with the country bumpkins, then all bets are off! Eventually, a critical level of confusion is reached, and then it's more than likely that the whole pile of offending items will be bagged up together, and eventually removed to an undisclosed location, which I would not give up even under the most extreme torture. The most annoying items are those large things which can end up dominating a room, as in the collapsible house in the photo above. At least now it's in the basement, and not occupying half of the living room! Toys are an especially touchy subject these days, as it is only mere weeks before a whole new set of objects will be entering my life. Happy Holidays!
