Welcome back

to PHY 3305

Today’s Lecture:
Statistical Mechanics

Satyendra Nath Bose

1894 - 1974

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Announcements
• Problem Set 8 regrades are due Thursday, April 4.
• Chapter 9 reading assignment:
Appendix J, 9.1 - 9.9
• Problem Set 9 is due Tuesday, April 10th.
• Tuesday, April 10th - initial outline of topic with
primary points
• Tuesday, April 17th - complete draft of talk
• Week of April 24th - final presentations

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Exam Comments
• Several of you did not perform as well as
I would have expected. 74 A
68 A-
• High Score (80 pts): 72 pts.
Low Score: 24 pts. 64 B+
• Each problem (except last) was performed 60 B
correctly by at least one student. 56 B-
• Last problem was an example done both in 52 C+
the book and in lecture. 48 C
• Opportunity to replace midterm exam 44 C-
score with score from the CUMULATIVE 28 D
final.
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Review Question 1
The magnetic quantum number ms is most
closely associated with what property of
the electron in an atom?

a) Magnitude of the orbital angular momentum

b) Energy
c) z component of the spin angular momentum
d) z component of the orbital angular momentum
e) Radius of the orbit
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Review Question 2
An atom is in a state with orbital quantum
number l=2. Possible values of the magnetic
quantum number ml are:

a) 1, 2
b) 0, 1, 2
c) 0, 1
d) -1, 0, 1
e) -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Review Question 3

The Pauli exclusion Principle is obeyed by:

a) all particles
b) all charged particles
c) all Fermions
d) all Bosons
e) only electrons

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Review Question 4
The magnetic quantum number ms is most
closely associated with what property of
the electron in an atom?

a) Magnitude of the orbital angular momentum

b) Energy
c) z component of the spin angular momentum
d) z component of the orbital angular momentum
e) Radius of the orbit

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Review Question 5
When a lithium atom is made from a helium atom by
adding a proton (and neutron) to the nucleus and an
electron outside, the electron goes into an n = 2, l =
0 state rather than an n = 1, l = 0 state. This is an
indication that electrons:

a) obey the Pauli exclusion principle

b) obey the minimum energy principle
c) obey the Bohr correspondence principle
d) are bosons
e) and protons are interchangeable

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Statistical Mechanics
• Many physics experiments are analyzed as if the
interactions take place in single isolated events.
- Emission of light from a gas at low density
- Compton Scattering
• We are surrounded by a vast number of particles.
- Predictions are made about behaviors and properties of
systems where the number of particles is large (6.022 x
1023)
• Before tackling how quantum ideas, such as spin, play a
role in the behavior of large systems, we need to develop
the language of statistics and probability.
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Coin Flips
Consider a perfect coin, where the chance of landing on
heads or tails is 50%. What is the chance that the coin will
land heads up if 5 flips are performed?

Answer: P = pn = 0.505 = 0.031 = 3.1%

where p is the probability of heads and n is the

number of flips.

Each flip is independent so the probabilities just

multiply.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Parking Cars
Imagine that we are hired to park some cars. We have N
cars and N spaces in which to park them. How many unique
arrangements of the cars are there?

Answer: We can put N cars in the first space, N-1 cars

in the second space, N-2 cars in the third space, etc.

N(N-1)(N-2)...(2)(1) = N!

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Parking Cars - Take 2
What if we designate Ni of the N spaces as a special zone
where cars that park there are given coupons. There are Ni
coupons and the cars that park in those spaces will get the
coupons no matter which order those Ni cars park. How
many arrangements of those Ni cars are there such that
the remaining N - Ni cars unaffected (do not get a coupon)?

Answer: N!

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Parking Cars - Take 3
How many arranges of the N cars are there that result in a
unique group of people getting the coupons?
There are N! arrangements of the N cars in N spaces,
for each there are Ni! arrangements of cars in the Ni
spaces that leave the rest unchanged -- those Ni cars
will get coupons regardless of how they are arranged in
the spaces.
Answer = N!/Ni!

Say we had 4 cars and 3 spaces. Our answer will be

4!/3! = 4
1 23 4 34 1 2
4 12 3 234 1

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Parking Cars - Take 4
Now, imagine that two different establishments run coupon
deals, each designate different group of Ni and Nj spaces for
their rewards. How many arrangements of N cars will result
in unique people getting the coupons?

Answer = N!/(Ni!Nj!)

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 We can make a general statement. If we have N things that
can be arranged into M groups -

N!
W = !M
i=1 Ni !

A typical case is M = 2 -- a two state system where we

define the number of objects in one state as n and in the
other state as N - n
N!
W = Binomial Coefficient
n!(N − n)!

Short hand notation: ! "

N
W =
n
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Two-State Multi-particle System
What do I mean by “state”?
a specific way of arranging particles into a given set of
“boxes” (i.e. energy levels, positions in space, etc.)

Consider a gas that is trapped in a box. Imagine

partitioning the box into two halves. Let N be the number
of gas molecules in the box and NR be the number of
molecules on the right-hand side of the box.

1. What is the number of ways that all particles can be on

the left-hand side of the box?

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 1. What is the number of ways that all particles can be on
the left-hand side of the box?

2. What is the number of ways that 1 particle can be on the

right-hand side of the box?

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 3. What is the number of ways that half of the particles can
be on the right-hand side of the box?

What can we observe from these calculations?

The state in which the distribution of particles is

uniform is most probable. This is because it is simply
because there are more ways to obtain it.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 This observation can be extended to even larger
numbers of particles. In fact, with more particles it is
even less likely you will have the extreme case with all
the particles on one side of the room.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Definitions
Thermodynamic System:
A system in which the number of particle is large
enough that predictions become precise.
- properties under consideration are macroscopic,
such as temperature, pressure and density.
Statistical Mechanics:
Branch of physics that deals with probability theory
and is used to study thermodynamic systems.
- It is not nonclassical or “modern” physics. It can
be applied to many areas including classical and
quantum.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Particles in a Room

N = 4: N = 40:
Total # ways to distribute Total # ways to distribute
particles = area under curve particles = area under curve
11
1 + 4 + 6 + 4 + 1 = 16 10

1
The max occurs at NR = N
2
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Observations:
1
1. The max occurs at NR = N in both cases.
2
2. The larger the samples size, the curve is peaked more
sharply at NR = 1/2 N. There is a smaller fraction of
the number of ways far from NR = 1/2 N. This tells
us the probability of finding a nonuniform distribution
is smaller.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Increase to even larger numbers:

- As we increase the sample size, the distribution

becomes more peaked.
- When we have the case of 1023 particles the number
of ways occupies a minuscule region around NR = 1/2 N.
Conclusion: Each individual particle has a probability of
1/2 of being in either of two states, left or right, and the
distribution of particles will indeed have half in each
state if it is truly a thermodynamic system.
Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Microstates
The microstate is the state of the system given
complete microscopic knowledge.
- In the two sided room, each particle was either a
left-side or right-side particle.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Can we know the microstate of a gas?
Realistically, no. No observer can keep track of
molecules crossing the room and know which molecule
is on which side.

Macrostate:
The macrostate describes an overall condition of being,
achieved by many possible microstates.

- to know the macrostate is to know properties that

don’t depend on the exact microscopic states of
individual particles

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Back to our 4 gas molecules.
The macrostate NR = 2 has the
most corresponding microstates
that acheive it (6).

The macrostate NR = 0 has the fewest states to

achieve it (1).

Equilibrium State:

The macrostate that corresponds to the greatest number

of microstates, where each microstate is equally probable
is the most likely macrostate of the system.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 Equilibrium
If left alone (no external forces) a thermodynamic system
eventually comes to EQUILIBRIUM, the state where its
properties do not change with time.

Example: Air is released in a two-sided room.

- Both the microstate and macrostate would change.

- Individual particles would move from one side to
another.
- Air would eventually obtain a uniform distribution
(the most probable macrostate) and come to equilibrium.
- At the equilibrium point, the microstate still changes -
molecules move from one side to another, but the
macrostate does not.

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012

 The end
(for today)

Physics 3305 - Modern Physics Professor Jodi Cooley

Friday, April 6, 2012