Maxwell's Game

Play here: https://brandonseverin.github.io/maxwellsgame/

An outreach project I am working on for the Natalia Ares Group in the University of Oxford. This is my first time playing with javascript, hopefully the game won't be too buggy 😉.

Quickstart Guide

• Use the space bar on your keyboard to open the central trapdoor
• Try to collect the (red) hot fast-moving particles on one side of the divide and the (blue) cold slow-moving particles on the other, this lowers the Shannon entropy.
• Try and lower the Shannon entropy and post your lowest entropy score to Instagram or Twitter using #IFOX2020 #Entropy #MaxwellsGame
• Can you create order from disorder? Click here to start playing.

About

The player takes the role of the Demon in James Clerk Maxwell's famous thought experiment known as Maxwell's Demon. The player must try and reduce the entropy of the system by collecting the (red) fast-moving particles on one side of the divide and the (blue) slow moving particles on the other side of the divide through the careful manipulation of the central trapdoor using their spacebar. The argument is that by simply having information about the location of the particles in time and space the Demon or you the player has the ability to decrease the entropy of the system without putting energy into the system which would violate the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease, in other words: things are destined to fall apart and become more disordered. By sorting the particles into their constituent colours/speeds/temperatures we are creating order whereas if we were to leave the trap door open, the particles would naturally mix together in line with the second law of thermodynamics.

The Natalia Ares Group has made a short video explaining Maxwell's Game which is part of a larger series on entropy and thermodynamics. Here is a short video excerpt explaining the Maxwell's Demon thought experiment from Prof. Jim Al-Khalili's The Story of Information.

Additional Features

Due to popular demand one can now incorporate the cost of information erasure into the entropy calculation which can be toggled on/off via a button (ERASURE COST) in the quickstart guide box.

FAQs

• The space bar on my keyboard does not work. Can I still play the game?

  Yes you can! You can use the X or the O key to open and close the trapdoor.

• I resized my window, did I break the game?

  The Demon in Maxwell's thought experiment was not allowed to change the size of the box. If you resize your window the game automatically restarts itself and you lose your particle sorting progress 😢.

• How do I return back to the booth?

  By clicking here you can return to the IFOxford Explorazone Digital where you can navigate to the "Information Engines" booth/stall.

Acknowledgements

I got my feet wet by following Chris DeLeon and Chris Courses HTML5 Canvas animation tutorials on youtube. In fact, the majority of the foundational education and code for this project (balls on a canvas with basic collision detection) was from Chris Courses and Spicy Yoghurt. Many thanks to Ben Greenberg with the tip on collision detection - he has some really cool javascript work here. I really liked the way Ben Greenberg designed the info box for each programme so I adapted his CSS script to fit the game webpage.