Okay, all the dipoles being in their lowest energy level at absolute zero makes. The thing I still don't get is how the thermal energy of the reservoir puts the individual dipoles into their higher energy magnetic state. That is, he mechanism by which they are "kicked" into the higher energy state.
I understand that the magnetic moments do not determine the reservoir. What I'm having a conceptual issue with is why the temperature of the magnetic material (which I understand is completely dependent on the reservoir) can be related to its magnetization (i.e. the probability of a moment...
I'm currently in an introductory thermal physics course, and today we
learned about the Boltzmann factor and how to use it to calculate
various quantities with the corresponding probability distribution. All was going well until we got to the subject of paramagnetism.
We supposed a system of...