Macrostates and Microstates
Macrostates and Microstates
A macrostate represents a global (usually macroscopic) description of a system of particles, whereas a microstate specifies, in greater detail, the individual states of the constituent particles. Many different microstates can correspond to the same macrostate, as in the case shown here of a system of 25 particles of two possible colors. Particles are distinguishable in a microstate; as each particle can be green or blue, there are possible configurations, but there are only 26 possible configurations for macrostates.
25
2
Details
Details
The number of possible microstates for a given macrostate is equal to , where is the total number of particles and is the number of particles in a given state, in this case represented with the color blue.
N!/(n!(N-n)!)
N
n
References
References
[1] Wikipedia. "Microstate." (Aug 6, 2011) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstate_%28 statistical_mechanics %29.
External Links
External Links
Permanent Citation
Permanent Citation
Enrique Zeleny
"Macrostates and Microstates"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/MacrostatesAndMicrostates/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: January 11, 2012