The physical world around us behaves as it does partly because it’s made of a huge number of tiny molecules, each behaving randomly. In the 1800s, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell imagined that seemingly nonrandom events would happen on a random basis in our real world.

For example, the fastest-moving molecules would occasionally all find themselves in one part of a water glass and begin to boil, while the slower ones, left alone for a while, would freeze elsewhere in the glass. Or, at some point, all the molecules in a room would randomly move in just one direction rather than every which way.

The term associated with such strange hypothetical scenarios is “Maxwell’s demon.” Imagine this randomly weird world for a minute. Then describe something that would make it very difficult (or at least interesting) to live in a Maxwell’s-demon world. Also explain why you think these strange events don’t happen on a random basis in real life.