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 k_B 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 = k_Bln($\Omega$), 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 2^N 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 k_B.

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.