What term describes the measure of disorder in a system?

The term that describes the measure of disorder in a system is entropy. In thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, entropy quantifies how dispersed or spread out energy is within a system. Higher entropy indicates greater disorder, meaning that the components of a system are more randomly arranged or distributed. This concept is fundamental in understanding the direction of natural processes; systems tend to evolve towards a state of maximum entropy over time, reflecting a natural tendency towards disorder.

In contrast to entropy, energy typically refers to the capacity of a system to do work or produce heat and does not specifically address the arrangement or organization of components. Equilibrium describes a state where a system's conditions are stable and balanced, but it does not measure disorder. Order represents the opposite of disorder but does not provide a quantitative measure of the state of a system like entropy does.