Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-thermal-and-statistical-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/section-a/a1/c/solution
Past exam of the thermal and statistical physics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Section A A1 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
Particles within each species are indistinguishable, while the two species are physically distinguishable and their numbers are fixed. Independence makes the canonical partition function factor by species:Since at fixed volume, . The canonical entropy is thereforeFor large species populations, Stirling's approximation gives the equivalent Sackur-Tetrode equation formFor structureless particles with the same translational partition function, , where is their common thermal de Broglie wavelength. More generally the supplied common constant factor in should be retained in the entropy.
Writing separates the total-number contribution from the composition term:The last term is the entropy of mixing relative to separated ideal components at the same temperature and pressure. This is the entropy of a two-species classical ideal gas. Artificially labeling otherwise identical chemical atoms would not justify dividing by separate factorials or adding a mixing entropy. The pure-species limit is obtained by .
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