Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/paper-2/a8/c/ii/solution

Use ground-state references and the supplied ideal-gas, rigid-rotor and harmonic-oscillator approximations. The two ions have closed electronic shells; take their electronic ground-state degeneracies and the molecular electronic ground-state degeneracy as one, and neglect higher electronic levels. Consistently treated nuclear-spin factors cancel between the species. Since the molecule is heteronuclear, its rotational symmetry number is one.
Let be the reduced mass, neglecting the negligible mass correction from electron transfer. The ratio of translational partition functions per volume reduces to
The molecule has additional rotational and vibrational states, whereas the monatomic ions do not. At ,
Hence the dimensional equilibrium quotient is
The last form makes the unassigned standard concentration explicit. For the common choice of , the corresponding microscopic reference is , giving
Equivalently, the dimensional molar quotient is . A pressure-based gas standard is a different convention: taking with would give , rather than the same numerical constant.
The well-minimum convention gives the identical answer because
Constants used here are , , and .[ref]

New to topics? Read the docs here!