Entropy microscopic viewpoint

The two contrasting approaches, the macroscopic viewpoint which describes the bulk concentration behavior (last chapter) versus the microscopic viewpoint dealing with molecular statistics (this chapter), are not unique to chromatography. Both approaches offer their own special insights in the study of reaction rates, diffusion (Brownian motion), adsorption, entropy, and other physicochemical phenomena [2]. 

ENTROPY FROM THE MICROSCOPIC VIEWPOINT (STATISTICAL THERMODYNAMICS)... 

Although thermodynamics makes no assumptions about the structure of matter, it is sometimes instructive to interpret thermodynamic results in terms of microscopic properties. For example, entropy may be considered as a measure of the degree of disorder of the elements of a system the more disorder the greater the entropy. From a molecular viewpoint, the disorder is associated with the molecules of a system. 

The paradox here is that if entropy is a state property of a system it cannot depend on what we happen to know about the system. Quantum mechanics has a similar-sounding, but quite different epistemological problem, which, in principle, placed limits on the precision by which certain pairs of properties are measured. Since measurement involves experimental design and choice of parameters of interest, in the quantum framework the observer is required to complete the phenomenon. In statistical thermodynamics, however, entropy is microscopic uncertainty and if we interpret entropy as lack of microscopic information about the macroscopic thermodynamic state we seem to get involved in the identity of that state alone, which would be a conflicting standpoint. Therefore, let us discuss all such viewpoints and inherent differences often arising from not fully congruous ideas, which try to enlighten the true interdisciplinary of the notion of entropy. 

It was not until the second decade of the twentieth century that this entropy decrease could be explained from the microscopic or molecular viewpoint. For it was only by that point that it was clearly recognized and accepted that rubber and rubber-like materials were composed of amorphous networks of long-chain molecules. These molecules, also known as... 

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