Statistical Physics

  • #1
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Please help me, what are micro and macrostates, what are accessible states?
 
  • #3
Consider five coin tosses. I would call each of the possible outcomes a microstate (for example, HTTHT, THHHT, HHHTH, TTTTT and so on. H stands for heads and T for tails).

Now suppose I define a variable such as X=Total number of heads. For the microstates I have mentioned above, X will take values 2, 3, 4, 0 and so on. X is a macrostate. It tells you nothing about the specific configuration of the system. For example, X=4 will correspond to five microstates (HHHHT, HHHTH, HHTHH, HTHHH, THHHH), but you have no way of knowing which one.

An accessible state is a microstate the system can take without violating any laws governing the system.

I hope it is clear now.
 

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