stekas@hou2g.UUCP (J.STEKAS) (03/22/84)
Sure it's possible for all the gas in a room to find itself in one corner - it's called a "fluctuation". It's easy to calculate the probability of such a fluctuation ... Say the room has a mole of particles (10^23) and we want to find out the probability that all the particles find themselves in a sub-volume which amounts to 10% of the total volume. Now the probability for a given particle to be in that small volume is 0.1, so the probability that ALL of them would be in that small volume is 23 (10 ) p = 0.1 23 Now this number is not of order of magnitude 23, but 10 . That means 10^23 zeros to the right of the decimal point! I think that this is about as "unlikely" as anything one can imagine, considerably less likely than finding a Unicorn in your garage tomorrow. Jim