Chapter 6: Q. 6.38 (page 246)
At room temperature, what fraction of the nitrogen molecules in the air are moving at less than?
Short Answer
The required fraction is .
/*! This file is auto-generated */ .wp-block-button__link{color:#fff;background-color:#32373c;border-radius:9999px;box-shadow:none;text-decoration:none;padding:calc(.667em + 2px) calc(1.333em + 2px);font-size:1.125em}.wp-block-file__button{background:#32373c;color:#fff;text-decoration:none}
Learning Materials
Features
Discover
Chapter 6: Q. 6.38 (page 246)
At room temperature, what fraction of the nitrogen molecules in the air are moving at less than?
The required fraction is .
All the tools & learning materials you need for study success - in one app.
Get started for free
Consider a classical particle moving in a one-dimensional potential well , as shown. The particle is in thermal equilibrium with a reservoir at temperature , so the probabilities of its various states are determined by Boltzmann statistics.
{a) Show that the average position of the particle is given by
where each integral is over the entire axis.
A one-dimensional potential well. The higher the temperature, the farther the particle will stray from the equilibrium point.
(b) If the temperature is reasonably low (but still high enough for classical mechanics to apply), the particle will spend most of its time near the bottom of the potential well. In that case we can expand u(z) in a Taylor series about the equilibrium point
Show that the linear term must be zero, and that truncating the series after the quadratic term results in the trivial prediction .
(c) If we keep the cubic term in the Taylor series as well, the integrals in the formula for become difficult. To simplify them, assume that the cubic term is small, so its exponential can be expanded in a Taylor series (leaving the quadratic term in the exponent). Keeping only the smallest temperature-dependent term, show that in this limit differs from by a term proportional to . Express the coefficient of this term in terms of the coefficients of the Taylor series
(d) The interaction of noble gas atoms can be modeled using the Lennard Jones potential,
Sketch this function, and show that the minimum of the potential well is at , with depth . For argon, and . Expand the Lennard-Jones potential in a Taylor series about the equilibrium point, and use the result of part ( c) to predict the linear thermal expansion coefficient of a noble gas crystal in terms of . Evaluate the result numerically for argon, and compare to the measured value

Cold interstellar molecular clouds often contain the molecule cyanogen (CN), whose first rotational excited states have an energy of 4.7x 10-4 eV (above the ground state). There are actually three such excited states, all with the same energy. In 1941, studies of the absorption spectrum of starlight that passes | through these molecular clouds showed that for every ten CN molecules that are in the ground state, approximately three others are in the three first excited states (that is, an average of one in each of these states). To account for this data, astronomers suggested that the molecules might be in thermal equilibrium with some "reservoir" with a well-defined temperature. What is that temperature?
Prove that, for any system in equilibrium with a reservoir at temperature T, the average value of E2 is
Then use this result and the results of the previous two problems to derive a formula for in terms of the heat capacity,
You should find
Imagine a world in which space is two-dimensional, but the laws of physics are otherwise the same. Derive the speed distribution formula for an ideal gas of nonrelativistic particles in this fictitious world, and sketch this distribution. Carefully explain the similarities and differences between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases. What is the most likely velocity vector? What is the most likely speed?
The analysis of this section applies also to liner polyatomic molecules, for which no rotation about the axis of symmetry is possible. An example is , with . Estimate the rotational partition function for a molecule at room temperature. (Note that the arrangement of the atoms is, and the two oxygen atoms are identical.)
What do you think about this solution?
We value your feedback to improve our textbook solutions.