Finally, Grasp it with Your Common Sense

After having experienced various manifestations of the Second Law with dice, it is time to pause, analyze and rationalize what we have learned so far. We recall that we have observed different phenomena with different mechanisms. We shall see in the next chapter that some of these examples (color, taste and scent) have counterparts in real experimental systems. Other examples cannot be performed using particles (single particles do not emit sound waves; and the temperature that we feel with the tip of our fingers is a result of the distribution of velocities. One just cannot assign a temperature to each molecule). There are of course many more examples. The central question that concerns us in this chapter is: What are the features that are common to all the phenomena that we have observed in the experiments described in Chapters 4 and 5? The phenomena discussed in this chapter are essentially the same as those in Chapters 4 and 5, except that N is very large, much larger than the largest value of N discussed previously.