User:Kpedersen1/Bolt (Entropy)

The Bolt is a useful (though not neccesarily fundamental) unit of entropy. The plural of Bolt is Boltz (not Bolts). Named in honor of Ludwig Boltzmann:


 * $$1 \, Bolt = k_{B}\ln\left(2\right) \approx 9.5699 \times 10^{-24} JK^{-1} $$

where kB is Boltzmann's constant. A single Bolt is the entropy of a system with two equally probable microstates. For such equipartioned systems, a Bolt is the smallest amount of entropic information possible - a system with a single state requires no information/entropy to describe (using the formula S = kBln($\Omega$), where $$\Omega$$ is the number of equally probable states, ln(1) = 0). For any two state system (where p1 is the probaility that the system is in state 1 and p2 is the probability that the system is in state 2) a Bolt is the maximal entropy the system can possess (when p1 = p2).

A Bolt is similar to a bit in that N Boltz are required to fully describe 2N equally probably states. In this sense Boltz can be considered a binary unit of entropy. However, it cannot be stressed enough that this is not meant to imply that entropy is binary or quantized. At this time, it is merely a useful unit for studying entropy at the fundamental level of kB.

Since entropy is additive, if two seperate systems (with entropies S1 and S2 respectively) are brought in contact with one another to form a combined system, their resulting entropy S3 = S1 + S2. This generalization readily applies to Boltz; such that if S1 = 1 Bolt and S2 = 2 Boltz, S3 = 3 Boltz.