Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-2/a6/c/solution

At low temperature, the upper orientation has negligible Boltzmann weight, whereas at high temperature all three orientations become equally probable. Consequently
The high-temperature limit is a finite arithmetic mean of three available one-site energy levels. It is not an unbounded translational or rotational equipartition contribution: the prescribed site model has only three states per molecule. Their common binding offset can keep this limiting internal energy negative without any inconsistency.

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