We visited Sleddale Hall in Wet Sleddale which was Uncle Monty's cottage in the film Withnail and I. It is being restored. It got me thinking about entropy again because it's becoming clear that I'm not totally sorted out in my understanding. I went back to Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe. In Episode 4 he visited the desert in Namibia and built and sandcastle. That was ordered and therefore had low entropy. They filmed the wind destroying the sand castle and noted that the entropy increases. Sleddale Hall is being put back to a state of order and thus low entropy. But the natural thing to happen is for it to fall apart if untended. This is like the sand castle blown by the wind and thus its entropy will increase. I was also thinking about energy and stability. Energy has to be expended to build these structures. Materials are lifted up and so the structures have higher potential energy. As they fall apart, the potential energy decreases and we would say that things become more stable (in other words, once it's fallen over, it can't fall over again). So stable conditions must have low potential energy and high entropy. A climax community as mentioned in the Greenham Common post two weeks ago is a biologically stable condition. Hence it must have high entropy. It can't be ordered in the way that I suggested - I suppose that it should be homogeneous and any part couldbe swapped with any other without changing anything. Then to what extent would it be meaningful to suggest that a climax community has low potential energy?
