Law of Equipartition of energy

Whenever we study kinetic theory of gas,we usually assume that a container contains gas molecules, these gas atoms keep moving from one place to another basically it means that they creates motion and exerts pressure. So when we supply heat or energy the motion and the pressure of the molecule increase. Thus this law describes how the supplied energy is distributed among the molecules in thermal equilibrium.      

Thus the Law of Equipartition of Energy is a fundamental principle in physics that describes how energy is distributed among the different degrees of freedom of a system in thermal equilibrium.

According to the law of equipartition of energy, for any dynamic system in thermal equilibrium, the total energy for the system is equally divided among the degree of freedom.

According to this law, in a system in thermal equilibrium, each degree of freedom (i.e. each independent way that the system can store energy) will, on average, have an equal amount of energy. In other words, the total energy of the system will be equally distributed among all available degrees of freedom.

 

For example, in a gas consisting of monoatomic molecules (such as helium or neon), each molecule has three degrees of freedom corresponding to its motion in three spatial dimensions. According to the law of equipartition, each degree of freedom will have, on average, an equal amount of energy equal to kT/2, where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature of the gas. Therefore, each molecule will have, on average, a total energy of 3kT/2.

 

The law of equipartition of energy is a useful tool for calculating the energy content of a system in thermal equilibrium, and it is used extensively in statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and other fields of physics. However, it is important to note that this law is only valid for systems in thermal equilibrium and does not apply to systems that are not in equilibrium or that exhibit non-classical behavior (such as quantum mechanical systems at very low temperatures).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maxwell equation

Elementary Statistical Mechanics