W versus S

[Alexis Elliott 1J]

I am bit confused on the conceptual difference between the W and the S. I understand that S is a function of S, but I don't understand how they are different in terms of what they represent.

Thanks!!

[Jenna Smith 3F]

Simply speaking, S is entropy, a measure of disorder. A low value of S means the level of disorder is small, while a high value of S means the level of disorder is high. One way to calculate S is the Boltzmann formula, which is S=klnW. W is the number of possible arrangements (in the case of a molecule, it could be the number of orientations, like OH, which has 2, O-H and H-O) of something. The value of W is a way to gauge disorder, and can be related to S with Boltzmann's formula, which is used calculate a useful quantitative value that can be used for other calculations.

[Cobie_Allen_1H]

I was confused by this as well, thank you for the explanation. So S is essentially related to W in that in order to measure the total disorder we must know the W, right?