Related papers: A note on Gibbs paradox
In statistical mechanics, the generally called Stirling approximation is actually an approximation of Stirling's formula. In this article, it is shown that the term that is dropped is in fact the one that takes fluctuations into account.…
Statistical thermodynamics is valuable as a conceptual structure that shapes our thinking about equilibrium thermodynamic states. A cloud of unresolved questions surrounding the foundations of the theory could lead an impartial observer to…
In his Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances Gibbs seems to suggest that the chemical potential of a crystal nucleus need not be equal to that of the coexisting fluid. In the field, Gibbs's statement has been something of a hot potato. I…
The equations of state for an ideal generalized gas, like an ideal quantum gas, are expressed in terms of power laws of the temperature. The reduction of an ideal generalized gas to an ideal classical case occurs when the characteristic…
The thermodynamic properties of ideal quantum gases are derived solely from dimensional arguments, the Pauli principle and thermodynamic relations, without resorting to statistical mechanics.
For a thought experiment concerning the mixing of two classical gases, Gibbs concluded that the work that can be extracted from mixing is determined by whether or not the gases can be distinguished by a semi-permeable membrane; that is, the…
We present an example counter to the widely-accepted concept on equilibrium states that "Any thermodynamic equilibrium state of two component systems is determined by specifying 4 thermodynamic variables that include at least 1 extensive…
We propose a fundamental relation for a classical ideal gas that is valid at all temperatures with remarkable accuracy. All thermodynamical properties of classical ideal gases can be deduced from this relation at arbitrary temperature.
It has been suggested recently that `$q$-exponential' distributions which form the basis of Tsallis' non-extensive thermostatistical formalism may be viewed as mixtures of exponential (Gibbs) distributions characterized by a fluctuating…
Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading…
A generalized entropy arising in the context of superstatistics is obtained for an ideal gas. The curvature scalar associated to the thermodynamic space generated by this modified entropy is calculated using two formalisms of the geometric…
We show that G\"odel's negative results concerning arithmetic, which date back to the 1930s, and the ancient "sand pile" paradox (known also as "sorites paradox") pose the questions of the use of fuzzy sets and of the effect of a measuring…
The purpose of this note is to see to what extent ideal gas laws can be obtained from simple Newtonian mechanics, specifically elastic collisions. We present simple one-dimensional situations that seem to validate the laws. The first…
Defining the entropy of classical particles raises a number of paradoxes and ambiguities, some of which have been known for over a century. Several, such as Gibbs' paradox, involve the fact that classical particles are distinguishable, and…
An equation of state for an ideal gas with a small number of particles is studied. The resulting equation is found to differ from that expected in conventional thermodynamics, which is strikingly illustrated when considering the traditional…
The concept of classical indistinguishability is analyzed and defended against a number of well-known criticisms, with particular attention to the Gibbs' paradox. Granted that it is as much at home in classical as in quantum statistical…
There is a paradox in the standard model of cosmology. How can matter in the early universe have been in thermal equilibrium, indicating maximum entropy, but the initial state also have been low entropy (the "past hypothesis"), so as to…
Using a game theory approach and a new extremal problem, Gibbs formula is proved in a most simple and general way for the classical mechanics case. A corresponding conjecture on the asymptotics of the classical entropy is formulated. For…
The reversibility and recurrence paradoxes are key issues that have been left unsolved in researches on the foundation of thermodynamics since the 19th century. This article shows that (1) the reversibility paradox can be overcome if we pay…
We develop the argument that the Gibbs-von Neumann entropy is the appropriate statistical mechanical generalisation of the thermodynamic entropy, for macroscopic and microscopic systems, whether in thermal equilibrium or not, as a…