Aum Sri Sai Ram

Statistical Mechanics
Course Code - PPHY 302
Lecture - 2
Temperature
We will now explore the concept of temperature and see how it can be defined in
a statistical manner.

Temperature is simply a measure of “hotness” or “coldness”, so that we say that a

hot body has a higher temperature than a cold one.

For example, as shown in figure if an object has temperature T1 and is hotter than
a second body with temperature T2 , we expect that T1 > T2 .

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But what do these numbers T1 and T2 signify?

Any formula for T from fundamental physics?

Absolute definition of temperature based on fundamental physics?

Let us try to answer these questions.

Consider what happens if our hot and cold bodies are placed in thermal contact
which means that they are able to exchange energy.

Experiment suggests that, if nothing else is going on, heat will always flow from
the hotter body to the colder body, as shown in figure

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As heat flows from the hotter body to the colder body, we expect that the energy
content and the temperatures of the two bodies will each change with time.

After some time being in thermal contact, we reach the situation in figure.

The macroscopic properties of the two bodies are now no longer changing with
time. If any energy flows from the first body to the second body, this is equal to the
energy flowing from the second body to the first body; thus, there is no net heat
flow between the two bodies.

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The two bodies are said to be in thermal equilibrium, which is defined by saying
that the energy content and the temperatures of the two bodies will no longer be
changing with time.

Two bodies in thermal equilibrium will be at the same temperature.

As a function of time, systems in thermal contact tend towards thermal

equilibrium, rather than away from it. The process that leads to thermal

equilibrium is called thermalization.

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Microstate - Each of the specific outcomes

Macrostate - The number of heads and tails, regardless

of the order in which they come

The 5 macrostates for flipping a coin 4 times with the

associated microstates

Total number of arrangements (or microstates ) - 2⁴ = 16

Each microstate has a 1 in 16 chance of occuring

We intuitively know that the most likely outcome is to get 2
heads and 2 tails. From a statistical point of view, this is
because it has more microstates than any other macrostate.

To be specific, let us first look at the macrostate which gets 4

heads. There is only 1 microstate: HHHH. But the macrostate
of 2 heads and 2 tails has 6 microstates: they are HHTT,
HTHT, HTTH, TTHH, THTH, THHT. So we are 6 times as likely
to get the macrostate of 2 heads and 2 tails than we are to get
the macrostate of 4 heads
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In this problem, we have the basic elements of statistical mechanics.

We have learnt that a microstate is the detailed arrangement and each

microstate is equally probable.

However, the macrostate, which we will define to be the situation of macroscopic

interest, can contain several microstates, and obviously the most probable
macrostate is the one that contains the most microstates.

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Consider two large systems that can exchange energy with each other, but not
with anything else.

The two systems are in thermal contact with each other, but thermally isolated
from their surroundings.

The first system has energy E1 and the second system has energy E2 .

The total energy E = E1 + E2 is therefore assumed fixed since the two systems
cannot exchange energy with anything else.
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Each of these systems can be in a number of possible microstates.

Assume that the first system can be in any one of Ω1(E1) microstates and

the second system can be in any one of Ω2(E2) microstates.

The whole system can be in any one of Ω1(E1)*Ω2(E2 ) microstates.

We use the product of the two quantities, Ω1(E1 ) and Ω2(E2 ), because for each
of the Ω1(E1) states of the first system, the second system can be in any of its Ω2
(E2) different states.

Hence the total number of possible combined states is the product of Ω1(E1) and
Ω2(E2).

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This choice of definition leads to experimentally verifiable consequences. 12