Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-1/a3/b/ii/solution

Set , the rotational temperature. For a continuous nonnegative variable ,
Equating this derivative to zero gives the most populated rotational level
The second derivative is , so this is a maximum when . At lower temperatures the constrained continuous maximum is . For the physical integer maximum compare the nearby allowed levels explicitly.

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