Equations · equation
Equipartition Theorem
Statistical Mechanics · 1859
- Equation
- ⟨E⟩ = ½kT per degree of freedom
- Field
- Statistical Mechanics
- Named After
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Year
- 1859
Symbols
⟨E⟩ average energy · k Boltzmann constant · T absolute temperature · counts each quadratic way a molecule can hold energy (motion, rotation, vibration)
Significance
Heat shares itself equally among all the ways a molecule can move — which predicts heat capacities from pure counting. Its mysterious failures at low temperatures were early cracks that quantum theory eventually explained: frozen-out degrees of freedom.
Referenced by
constant
element
equation
theory
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