With constant gravity and mean molecular weight, hydrostatic equilibrium gives , where is the atmospheric scale height. A flat exoplanet transmission spectrum alone does not determine or a unique cloud-top pressure.
Coefficient of thermal expansion Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
The volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion is the fractional volume increase per temperature increase at fixed pressure and composition:The mass density form requires fixed mass . Its units are ; is another notation for this coefficient. For small temperature changes at fixed pressure,For a finite change in a single thermodynamic phase, integrate the possibly varying coefficient: . A constant-coefficient approximation gives an exponential, while the displayed linear formula additionally requires .
For an ideal gas at fixed particle number,Integrating recovers the exact fixed-pressure thermal expansion ratio . Combining expansion with isothermal compressibility gives the local response of any smooth simple compressible system of fixed composition,The ratio has units . For the one-mole ideal gas state in isothermal compressibility, it is : a increase at fixed volume raises the pressure by about . Maxwell relations identify this same ratio as the entropy slope with respect to volume and give .
Under the Boussinesq approximation, the small fractional mass density change produces buoyancy while mass density is otherwise treated as constant. A positive temperature excess gives reduced gravity in the convention used in natural ventilation. The coefficient therefore converts a heat budget into a buoyancy budget. The same measurable expansion response supplies entropy changes and heat capacity differences through Maxwell relations, connecting fluid motion to equilibrium thermodynamics.
Collapsible tube flow 2026-10-14
A one-dimensional collapsible tube model couples area , mean axial velocity and internal pressure : and . A wall relation specifies internal minus external pressure as a function of area. Decreasing area generally increases the friction coefficient , while positive wall stiffness gives real small-amplitude wave speed.
Common-pressure melting-point slope 2026-10-14
When the solid and liquid have the same pressure, equality of chemical potentials implies . With latent heat of fusion , this gives the displayed slope. If solid is less dense than liquid, raising the common pressure depresses the melting temperature. is absolute temperature. This coexistence-curve derivative differs from a thermomolecular pressure difference between equal-density phases.
Common-tangent construction for phase coexistence Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
For a bulk free-energy density , two compositions coexist across a flat interface whenThe first condition equates the chemical potentials, and the second equates the pressure. Equivalently the same straight line of slope is tangent to the graph of at both compositions. A stable coexistence pair uses a supporting tangent, so the resulting mixture lowers the bulk free energy.
Compressibility 2026-10-14
Compressibility measures how readily a sample's volume decreases when its pressure increases. For a simple compressible system with fixed particle number and composition, specify the constraint :Here denotes pressure, also written elsewhere. The minus sign makes compressibility positive on a mechanically stable equilibrium branch. Its units are inverse pressure, ; its reciprocal is the constrained bulk modulus, measured in pascal units. Holding temperature fixed gives isothermal compressibility; holding entropy fixed gives isentropic compressibility along an isentropic process. The latter describes a reversible adiabatic compression, since an irreversible adiabatic process can increase entropy. [ref]
For an ideal gas, the ideal gas law and the reversible ideal-gas adiabat give, at the same equilibrium state,Here and are the whole sample's heat capacity at constant pressure and heat capacity at constant volume, and is the heat capacity ratio. Constant is required for the finite-path formula . Reversible adiabatic compression raises the temperature, making the pressure rise more steeply than in an isothermal compression. Thus keeping entropy fixed makes the gas harder to compress locally. For a classical monatomic gas at , , so and ; the corresponding values of the bulk modulus are and .
For a smooth, stable single thermodynamic phase at positive temperature, Maxwell relations also implywhere is the coefficient of thermal expansion. The ideal gas result is one example of this broader link between mechanical and thermal responses. The equality is possible when and the other responses remain finite. These formulas compare equilibrium partial derivatives, rather than arbitrary fast or dissipative compression histories. [ref]
Put and . The mass, momentum and energy jump conditions for a perpendicular magnetohydrodynamic shock factor into the unchanged state andFor the compressive physical branch , positive downstream pressure implies when and the upstream sound speed or Alfvén speed is nonzero. Indeed the polynomial impliesIt then gives : the upstream flow exceeds the perpendicular fast magnetosonic wave speed. The exactly cold unmagnetized strong-shock limit reaches the upper compression bound.
Compton y parameter 2026-10-14
The Compton y parameter is the Thomson scattering optical depth weighted by the dimensionless Electron temperature. It measures the integrated electron pressure along a line of sight. When hot, nonrelativistic electrons scatter much colder photons, the first-order radiation energy gain is times the incident energy. The spectrum is redistributed while the total photon number density is conserved locally by scattering.
For an unmagnetized ideal gas without gravity, the pressure equation gives internal-energy balance , where . The momentum equation gives kinetic-energy balance with source . Their sum is conservative with the displayed total-energy flux. Tangential velocities contribute to kinetic energy even when all derivatives are in the normal direction. Smooth polytropic flow advects its entropy parameter; a physical shock need not preserve that parameter across the discontinuity.
Constant gas-radiation ratio vertical disc structure Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For constant positive and molecular gas constant , the gas–radiation equation of state gives . Vertical hydrostatic equilibrium in harmonic central gravity therefore gives with . The mass density and pressure powers are three and four. Integrating both faces yields and . With constant opacity, radiative diffusion produces a linear flux and height-independent dynamic viscosity . This is an interior formal profile; its low-density surface requires a photospheric treatment beyond diffusion.
Constant-tension balloon discharge 2026-10-14
A spherical balloon feeding an inviscid uniform tube plug, with entrance excess pressure , satisfies and . Eliminating yields the displayed equation. Its first integral is . From rest at radius , ; integration gives , where . The ideal emptying time is . Independently prescribed initial flow changes and therefore this time.
At fixed temperature and pressure, a closed reacting system reaches thermochemical equilibrium by minimizing Gibbs free energy over nonnegative species amounts subject to conserved elemental abundances. For an allowed stoichiometric vector , an interior minimum has . More generally the chemical potential vector lies in the row span of the elemental conservation matrix at positive concentrations, with the appropriate one-sided inequalities for absent species. The first law of thermodynamics gives the thermodynamic differential, while the Second law of thermodynamics supplies the minimization direction.
Contact discontinuity 2026-10-14
A contact discontinuity in one-dimensional gas dynamics moves with the common fluid velocity and has continuous pressure, while mass density and specific entropy can jump. The mass jump condition is automatic with common ; momentum conservation then requires . The energy jump condition is also satisfied. Thus a contact is a material interface, not a compression shock. A smooth self-similar positive-density flow cannot spread this zero-speed-relative-to-the-fluid family into a fan: on an interval would require both and, from continuity, .