Timeline for The shape of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 16, 2018 at 10:02 | history | edited | Christophe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 3 characters in body
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| Mar 16, 2018 at 9:50 | comment | added | Christophe | In the usual derivation of the Boltzmann distribution, one introduces a discretization of the phase space. The microscopic states are then countable. $h_0$ is the surface of a cell (one degree of freedom). $e^{-\beta E}/{\cal Z}$ is the probability of a microscopic state so dividing by $h_0$, you get a probability density. You can usually safely ignore it since in the above expressions, $h_0$ also appears in the partition function so they cancel in the final expression. | |
| Mar 16, 2018 at 9:43 | comment | added | Student | This is excellent, thank you! May I ask, what is $h_0$? (Sorry, I am obviously not a physicist!) | |
| Mar 16, 2018 at 9:40 | vote | accept | Student | ||
| Mar 16, 2018 at 9:24 | history | answered | Christophe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |