Maxwells-Demon-Animation

For 1% extra credit towards the overall grade in my Thermal Physics course (PHY3513) here at the University of Florida, we could create any program that demonstrates knowledge of a topic covered in class. I found the thought experiment known as 'Maxwell's Demon' very fascinating when we learned about it, because it connected the realm of physics to the world of computation through its implications for information theory. Put concisely, the thought experiment originally sought to disprove the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of a thermally isolated system can only remain constant or increase, but never decrease. In the thought experiment, there is a 'demon' that selectively opens a gap between two chambers of gas and lets particles pass from one chamber to the other, resulting in a decrease in entropy. Read my analysis to learn if this does in fact violate the second law of thermodynamics, and how this simple thought experiment reveals that information is as fundamental a feature of the natural world as well-known concepts in physics like entropy.