This reminds me of when I unstuck a drawer using thermodynamics.
The drawer was getting locked after I pulled it out X or so inches, where Y is the full length the drawer can come out and X < Y.
I thought, "this is an implicit restriction on the degrees of freedom the drawer should have". Then I thought, well, if this system has fewer degrees of freedom than it should have, then I need to add degrees of freedom to it so that it may come unstuck.
How to add degrees of freedom? Well, I could attempt to add entropy to the system, so that becoming unstuck could asymptotically become a part of its configuration space, and it may come free!
The drawer was getting locked after I pulled it out X or so inches, where Y is the full length the drawer can come out and X < Y.
I thought, "this is an implicit restriction on the degrees of freedom the drawer should have". Then I thought, well, if this system has fewer degrees of freedom than it should have, then I need to add degrees of freedom to it so that it may come unstuck.
How to add degrees of freedom? Well, I could attempt to add entropy to the system, so that becoming unstuck could asymptotically become a part of its configuration space, and it may come free!
I shook the drawer vigorously.
It came unstuck.
Physics!