ABSTRACT
So far we have seen in outline the way in which we hope to relate the mechanical behaviour of individual molecules with their thermodynamic behaviour in large numbers. However, there are some important questions to answer before we work out the details of the programme. Why, you may ask, do we give equal weight to each distinguishable microscopic state of the assembly? We have counted them up and treated each distinguishable microstate impartially. Is this justified? The definition of a microstate of the assembly depends (a) on how we count the allowable states of the individual atom (e.g. are all the energy levels to be given equal weight in the first place?), and (b) on what we mean by the word ‘distinguishable’.
