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