[FRIAM] Boltzmann Distribution

[Nicholas Thompson]

FWIW,  I have been struggling with the concept of entropy for the last
month. One of the puzzles was why entropy increased with addition of heat.
I  bullied George for a few hours and he finally admitted not only that the
mean and variance of the B-distribution are correlated, but that its
variance is the square of its mean.   Why that is the case is beyond both
of us.

He also coughed up eventually the reason that adiabatic compression and
decompression don't alter entropy:  there is a trade off between spatial
constraint and kinetic energy such that as the gas is confined its kinetic
energy goes up and with that a compensating increase in the variance  of
the KE.

Yeah.  I know.   Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.

N

-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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