Seminar/ Colloquium

Title : The many faces of entropy.
Speaker : Prof Rajaram Nityananda, Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
Date : 16/03/2018, 03:30 PM (Friday), Seminar Hall, First Floor.

Abstract: 

Thermodynamics is one of the oldest subjects taught in any basic physics course and   used extensively in applications, but not easy for either the teacher or the student. At the core lie the concept of an irreversibly increasing quantity, the entropy which continues to intrigue us and cause heated (!) discussions even today. Work on information theory in the middle of the twentieth century, and on fluctuations in finite, sometimes small systems in the late twentieth century have shed light on the earlier debates, but have not penetrated the teaching of the subject.  The talk will go over this ground and propose a pedagogy of entropy for the twenty first century.