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sweater, as opposed to all other sweaters manufactured at
the same time, or any other item made from the precursor yarn.
 
Figure 4.4
 
Pottery — minerals.
If gross manufacturing traits are not present in
either the evidence or the reference material, more common physicochemical
characteristics are compared. In this circumstance, only the mineral composition
is available for analysis and comparison. Pottery from many manufacturers may
be included as possible sources for the evidence fragments.
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The Origin of Evidence — Divisible Matter and Transfer
91
 
3.
More on the Nature of Matter: Thermodynamics 
and Entropy
We briefly mentioned entropy in the preceding section. We would like to
expand on the necessity of understanding thermodynamics and its impact
on the nature of physical objects.
Thermodynamics is the study of the patterns of energy change. Thermody-
namics refers to energy, and “dynamics” means the patterns of change.
Specifically the study of thermodynamics deals mainly with (A) energy
conversion and (B) the stability of molecules and direction of change.
(Thinkquest, 1996)
It is the second concept, the stability of molecules and direction of change,
that interests us in the examination of physical evidence. This is addressed
by the second law of thermodynamics:
A spontaneous change is accompanied by an increase in the total entropy
of the system and its surroundings. Thus, the entropy of the universe always
increases. (Thinkquest, 1996)
Entropy (
 
S
) is most simply a measure of disorder. While the entropy in a
closed system might decrease, the entropy of the universe never decreases.
For instance, the molecules in one’s body exist in great order at the expense
of the ever-increasing entropy of the rest of the universe. Without specific