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Maxwell's demon

Maxwell's demon noun: a hypothetical creature in a thought experiment. Maxwell’s demon, if it existed, would act as a sort of gate guard by sorting between higher-energy molecules and lower-energy molecules within an enclosed space. Because such a sorting process would tend to decrease entropy, it would violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Noun

Maxwell's demon (plural Maxwell's demons)

  1. A hypothetical creature in a thought experiment. Maxwell’s demon, if it existed, would act as a sort of gate guard by sorting between higher-energy molecules and lower-energy molecules within an enclosed space. Because such a sorting process would tend to decrease entropy, it would violate the second law of thermodynamics.
    • She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat-engines, the other to do with communication. The equation for one, back in the ’30's, had looked very like the equation for the other. It was a coincidence. The two fields were entirely unconnected, except...1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 77

Forms of Maxwell's demon

pluralMaxwell's demons

Origin of Maxwell's demon

Named after physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) and demon, and probably from Greek daemon, a mythological being intermediate between gods and men.

Questions about Maxwell's demon

What does Maxwell's demon mean?
Maxwell's demon means a hypothetical creature in a thought experiment. Maxwell’s demon, if it existed, would act as a sort of gate guard by sorting between higher-energy molecules and lower-energy molecules within an enclosed space. Because such a sorting process would tend to decrease entropy, it would violate the second law of thermodynamics.
What part of speech is Maxwell's demon?
Maxwell's demon is a noun.
What is the plural of Maxwell's demon?
The plural of Maxwell's demon is Maxwell's demons.

Words near Maxwell's demon in the dictionary

  1. Maxwell bridge
  2. Maxwell bridges
  3. Maxwell Street Polish
  4. Maxwell Street Polishes
  5. Maxwell time
  6. Maxwell's demon
  7. Maxwell's demons
  8. Maxwell's otter
  9. Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
  10. Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions
  11. Maxwell-Wien bridge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Maxwell's demon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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