Thermodynamic
Entropy and Information
What are particles and bits?
Particles are objects that have a position and
momentum (speed and
mass), and most particles can interact with each other. The particles
used
in my example
can change
speed and/or direction when they bounce
off of each other or the walls, but they don't interact in other ways
and nothing else about them changes.
This implies that collisions are perfectly elastic and the total
kinetic energy is always the same.
Bits (binary digits) are a representation of any two
state system,
commonly used in
information theory and computer engineering. A bit can represent the
state of a light switch,
whether a pixel on a computer screen is white or black, the charge on a
capacitor, or anything else that can be considered in only one of
two states. By common convention a bit is written as 0 or 1, but in my
example a bit will be represented graphically as a black or white
square. In information theory "bit" has a slightly different
meaning;
a bit is the common unit of information or uncertainty/entropy. For
example the minimum number of bits required to represent a "message" is
the
information content of the message, and it can be fractional because
the measure is an average.