Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/paper-2/a7/d/solution

At low temperature, , so the denominator in the exact expression approaches one:
The exponential suppression dominates the factor. Almost all particles remain in the ground state, so very little volume change is thermally accessible.
At high temperature, , and therefore
The excited fraction has already approached , so further heating barely changes it. Both limits are consistent with a bounded two-level system; the high-temperature vanishing does not imply that ordinary materials cease expanding when additional levels or other mechanisms become accessible.

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