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With quantum mechanics, physicists are not only able to describe strange behaviors of microscopic particles, such as atoms and molecules but also capable of explaining why copper can conduct electricity whereas diamond can not. However, it is still not clear why we do not experience directly any quantum behavior, for example, we never encounter Schrödinger’s cat in our daily life. This has been puzzling physicists. There are two aspects to its solution: (1) how the wave function is related to reality (or measured results); (2) how quantum dynamics is reduced to classical dynamics.

As the world is made of quantum particles, any evolving phenomena that we see or experience are effectively the results of certain quantum dynamical processes. Thermodynamics is no exception. As a phenomenological theory of near equilibrium behaviors, it should be derivable from quantum dynamics. It is not clear at all how this can be done. The quantum origin of thermodynamical entropy is one of the central issues.