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Time’s arrow

We never see a broken glass reassemble itself, though the process does not violate the laws of physics. The concept of entropy explains why time does not ‘run backwards’, and helps us understand many things from fluorescence to the end of the universe

The terms in bold link to topics in the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA A-level specifications, as well as the IB, Pre-U and SQA exam specifications.

Entropy is a measure of disorder. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system can never decrease. It can be used to explore aspects of phenomena from fluorescence to cosmology, and properties of black holes.

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Capacitors

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Equations of motion and graphs

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