Why would it be fake? If you ask several physicists to measure the specific entropy of some material, they will all get the same answer. If one gets a different answer, they will look for the error.
Why would entropy be a fake number? As far as I know, physicists happily measure the specific entropies of different materials. It doesn’t seem very different from temperature or energy.
You can measure free energies. You can measure entropy differences. Entropy itself is pretty slippery. If you don’t go down to a quantum level, there’s literally no way to say just how much entropy there is in a system, because you can’t determine how fine to slice it. (In quantum mechanics, the answer is ‘h-bar’)
Even if you’re aware of quantum mechanics, in many systems there is the question of whether to include degrees of freedom that could possibly become involved but won’t (with thermodynamically large probability) on the relevant timescales.
So. Entropy: real or fake number?
… even if you don’t know about quantum mechanics?
To make it worse, multiplicity!
Why would it be fake? If you ask several physicists to measure the specific entropy of some material, they will all get the same answer. If one gets a different answer, they will look for the error.
Why would entropy be a fake number? As far as I know, physicists happily measure the specific entropies of different materials. It doesn’t seem very different from temperature or energy.
You can measure free energies. You can measure entropy differences. Entropy itself is pretty slippery. If you don’t go down to a quantum level, there’s literally no way to say just how much entropy there is in a system, because you can’t determine how fine to slice it. (In quantum mechanics, the answer is ‘h-bar’)
Even if you’re aware of quantum mechanics, in many systems there is the question of whether to include degrees of freedom that could possibly become involved but won’t (with thermodynamically large probability) on the relevant timescales.