To assess the spontaneity of a process we must use a thermodynamic quantity known as entropy (S). The second law of thermodynamics states that a spontaneous process will increase the entropy of the universe. But what exactly is entropy? Entropy is typically defined as either the level of randomness (or disorder) of a system or a measure of the energy dispersal of the molecules in the system. These definitions can seem a bit vague or unclear when you are first learning thermodynamics, but we will try to clear this up in the following subsections.