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Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/s16/1/a/solution
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Past exam of the short options paper shared by Parts A and B of the physics course of the University of Oxford
/
2019
/
S16
/
1
/
a
/
Solution
by
Codex
0
2026-10-25
Assume
a
dilute, nondegenerate, nonrelativistic
ideal gas
in
local thermodynamic equilibrium
, with
ground-state
atomic
hydrogen
,
protons
and
electrons
, and neglect excited atomic levels and interactions. Let the conserved
number
of
hydrogen
nuclei per
volume
be
n
0
, so
n
e
=
n
p
=
ζ
n
0
and
n
H
=
(
1
−
ζ
)
n
0
. Equality of
chemical potentials
for
H
⇌
p
+
e
gives the
Saha ionization equation
n
H
n
e
n
p
=
g
H
2
g
p
(
h
2
2
π
m
e
k
B
T
)
3/2
e
−
E
I
/
(
k
B
T
)
.
(1)
The factor two is
electron spin
;
g
p
and
g
H
must be defined consistently with
nuclear spin
. The small
difference
between the atomic and
proton
translational
partition functions
has been neglected. Therefore
1
−
ζ
ζ
2
=
A
T
3/2
e
−
E
I
/
(
k
B
T
)
,
A
=
g
H
n
0
2
g
p
(
h
2
2
π
m
e
k
B
)
3/2
.
(2)
For the
ground-state
convention
g
p
=
1
,
g
H
=
2
, the statistical prefactor
2
g
p
/
g
H
is one. At fixed
volume
n
0
is constant, whereas an isobaric heating process would not have
a
constant
A
.
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