13/10/2014 April | 2010 | Math and Science Tricks

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Archive for April, 2010
Selected Solutions to McQuarries Statistical Mechanics
Chapter 1
April 1, 2010
Problem 1-49
Maximize
with respect to each under the constraints that
Solution: Apply, first, Stirlings approximation to , giving
But, one of the constraints states that so this gives
Then, necessarily
And the total differential is, likewise
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where the other terms vanish because they are constants. Turning to the constraints, we write out
their differentials
From this, we can conclude that Equation (7
(///Users/jacoblerche/Documents/Blog/post0003_statmechhw01/post-template.html#eqwdiff)) may
be written
Then, applying Lagrange multipliers returns an expression as follows
In principle, and could be picked to solve for and , but any two terms may be picked
while leaving the other terms in the series completely independent. In which case, treat all the
terms as mutually exclusive, and so each term must individually be zero. Or, for all values
So it follows that
Problem 1-50
Show that the maximum of a multinomial distribution is given when .
Solution: The multinomial coefficients are given by
Similar to the previous problem, with Lagrange multipliers applied, results in
Then, writing out the partial derivatives gives
From which we may conclude that . Hence if there are s subject to the
restriction , it follows that
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As required.
Problem 1-51
Use the method of undetermined multipliers to show that
subject to the condition
is a maximum when constant.
Solution: Let
Then, applying Lagrange multipliers to the constraint gives the following relation
Taking the partial derivatives with respect to each shows that they are all equal to each other,
as in the previous problem. Hence for s we have
which is a constant, as required.
Problem 1-55
Show that is an even function of .
Solution: Expanding out the binomial in the denominator gives
Then, factoring out and canceling gives
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An even function is defined as satisfying the following relationship . Here, it is clear
that effecting the change of signs will leave the equation unchanged. Similarly
Again, it is clear that interchanging the signs leaves the equation the same.
Problem 1-56
The heat capacity of the Einstein model of a crystal is given by
where is the characteristic temperature of the crystal. Determine both the high- and low-
temperature limiting expressions for the heat capacity. Do the same thing for the Debye model of
crystals, in which
where is the Debye temperature of the crystal.
Solution: For , ie the high temperature limit, the top exponential because its ratio in the
exponent goes to zero. The bottom one may be expanded out as a power series as for small so
only the linear terms are kept
And so in the high temperature limit, as . Similarly, if then as in
Problem (1-55) we have
Necessarily, the right most exponential vanishes. Then, the term may be neglected because
compared to for large it contributes nothing. Then,
For the Debye equation, as the upper limit of integration may be replaced with , thus
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The integral, as looked up in a table of integrals, evaluates to
so all together the expression for the low temperature limit is
In the high temperature limit, assume that is small. Similar to the Einstein model, the top
exponential tends to , and the bottom exponential is expanded in a power series keeping only the
linear terms
Problem 1-57
Recognizing it as a geometric series, sum the following series in closed form:
Compare this result to
Under what conditions are these two results the same?
Solution: The sum of a geometric series is given by
Here, and so then the sum is
The integral evaluates to
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Letting leaves . Then, equating the two leads to
So when , the two are the same.
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