Solve for the Fairness Function

Highlights of the activity

1. This small group activity is designed to give students a chance to solve the fairness function in terms of several variables.
2. Students use their results from the “Maximizing the Lagrangian” activity to solve the fairness function in terms of several variables.
3. The whole class discussion focuses on checking the soundness of student understanding and showing them further manipulations of their result.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

After being introduced to multiple terms frequently used in statistical mechanics, making connections between how the terms can be used to answer a thermodynamics problem is important. This activity provides students with an exercise in manipulating common statistical mechanical variables to find the solution to a problem. Ultimately, the solution from this exercise can also lead to a solution for the internal energy in terms of the number of eigenstates possible in the system.

Reflections

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Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version