Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/a6/b/ii/solution

“Low” and “high” compare with the vibrational spacing , not temperature with an arbitrary number of kelvin. For , occupation of excited levels is exponentially suppressed and
This vanishing result uses the ground-relative energy zero. For , expand to obtain
This agrees with equipartition: the oscillator has one quadratic kinetic and one quadratic potential term, contributing each. The corresponding limiting vibrational heat capacity is zero at low temperature and at high temperature.

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