Energy dissipation in small-scale shape-change dynamics

TL;DR

This paper links shape changes in physical systems to entropy and energy dissipation, proposing a theoretical framework and experimental tests at the nanoscale to quantify this relationship.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpretation of shape as an information content and establishes a quantitative connection between shape change, entropy, and energy dissipation.

Findings

Shape change is associated with entropy variation.

Energy dissipation during shape change can be estimated.

Experimental tests are proposed for nanoscale systems.

Abstract

Shape is an important feature of physical systems although very seldom it is addressed in the framework of a quantitative description approach. In this paper we propose to interpret the shape of things as a physical manifestation of the content of information associated with each thing and show that a change of shape in a physical system is necessarily connected with a change of its entropy and thus involves energy. We estimate the amount of energy dissipated during a shape change and propose experimental tests to be performed in nanoscale systems, to verify this prediction by measuring the expected dissipation in few simple cases.