Abstract
Thermodynamics is concerned with systems with very large numbers of microscopic degrees of freedom. Consider for example one mole of a monatomic gas enclosed in a fixed volume. The number of atoms in this system is given by Advogadro’s number L = 6,025.1023. The mechanical state of motion of each of the atoms is characterized by each 3 coordinates for its position and its velocity. Hence, the number of the so-called microscopic degrees of freedom of the total system is f = 6 L.
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© 1981 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Schnakenberg, J. (1981). Thermodynamics. In: Thermodynamic Network Analysis of Biological Systems. Universitext. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67971-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67971-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-10612-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-67971-1
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