Introduction to Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

It is probably clear by now that the gas particles, of which there are several different varieties, have electronic excitation, vibrational, rotational, spin, and translational energies. While it is impossible to keep track of the exact total quantum energy an individual particle may possess at any given time, it is possible to determine for a large number of particles the approximate percentage distribution of the energy with suitable auxiliary conditions like the total energy being kept constant. Methods by which the statistics of the possible energy distributions are made do vary no doubt, but the most probable distribution for a large number of particles to be accommodated in a still larger number of energy levels seems to give similar results, as will be shown later.