Ludwig Boltzmann, entropy


A snippet from Boltzmann at the website

http://www.entropylaw.com/entropydisorder.html

<quote>
As a consequence, a dynamically ordered state, one with molecules
moving "at the same speed and in the same direction," Boltzmann
(1974/1886, p. 20) asserted, is thus "the most improbable case
conceivable...an infinitely improbable configuration of energy."
Because this idea works for certain near equilibrium systems such
as gases in boxes, and because science until recently was dominated
by near equilibrium thinking, Boltzmann's attempted reduction of the
second law to a law of disorder became widely accepted as the second
law rather than simply an hypothesis about the second law, and one
that we now know fails.
</quote>

A flowing river. I know that the molecules aren't going in the
exact same direction like photons in a laser beam, but the average
direction vector is downstream and all the molecules are going
there sometime soon. And wind blowing also. In both of those cases
I would expect a subset of possible microstates (those with direction
vectors going downstream or downwind) to be more probable that others
and not tend toward a maximum. Are these examples where Boltzmann's
hypothesis fails?

Also, I believe that determining the number of possible microstates
was not achievable in Boltzmann's lifetime, and he really had no
idea how enormous the number would be for any temperatures
greater than absolute zero.

Anybody worked out the history of the "entropy = disorder" idea?



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