The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics
Veritasium5 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2023–2024
explainer · general · evergreen · 2023–2024 on HN
Veritasium's explainer on entropy, presented as one of physics' most important and least understood concepts. It uses examples such as heat engines and the sun's energy flowing through the Earth.
HN commenters say it made entropy intuition click and point to it in threads on energy, heat and equilibrium.
Up next
3 mo on HNOld car headlights were all the same — which was a fairly bright idea
Technology Connections
4 HN recommender · 2022–2023
5 mo on HNHow I Designed a Free Music Font for 5 Million Musicians (MuseScore 3.6)
Tantacrul
5 HN recommender · 2021–2024
4 mo on HNAtari's Quadrascan Explained
Retro Game Mechanics Explained
3 HN recommender · 2021–2026
3 mo on HNFour Dimensional Maths: Things to See and Hear in the Fourth Dimension - with Matt Parker
The Royal Institution
3 HN recommender · 2017–2022
2 mo on HNRimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods
GDC Festival of Gaming
2 HN recommender · 2020–2026
7 mo on HNFractals are typically not self-similar
3Blue1Brown
7 HN recommender · 2017–2024
9 mo on HNA Deep Dive into Nanite Virtualized Geometry
SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
7 HN recommender · 2021–2026
5 mo on HNCoding Adventure: Ant and Slime Simulations
Sebastian Lague
6 HN recommender · 2021–2024
8 mo on HNI bought 1000 meters of wire to settle a physics debate
AlphaPhoenix
8 HN recommender · 2021–2026
8 mo on HNThe Speed of Light is NOT About Light
PBS Space Time
8 HN recommender · 2017–2023
7 mo on HNWhy No One Has Measured The Speed Of Light
Veritasium
6 HN recommender · 2020–2024
6 mo on HNRichard Feynman - The.Character of Physical Law - Part 1 The Law of Gravitation (full version)
Tinkerin' Thinkers
6 HN recommender · 2013–2022
5 comments from Hacker News
For the longest time I had no real intuition of what entropy actually represented. This veritasium video explained it in a way that finally clicked for me: ▶ this video
I like my entropy story with more steam engines, “The most misunderstood concept in physics", by Veritasium (YouTube, 2023) ( ▶ this video )
This is a great video that touches on your point, the Earth must radiate the heat it receives to stay in equilibrium, even if it uses it to do work in the process. ▶ this video
Maybe watch this video about entropy. Its not about where energy flows, its about hoe entropy can be used to calculate. ▶ this video
It's not temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated) Temperature is precisely what leads to 'energy radiated' after all (see: black body emission). Temperature is not 'the leftover energy'. The Earth is broadly in equilibrium. It's more like delta_temperature = constant * (energy from sun - energy reflected - energy radiated) Any imbalance between energy in and energy out is what manifests as increase or decrease in global temperature. This Veritasium video gives a good idea of what we do get from the sun, if not 'net energy in': ▶ this video