Equipartition Theorem - Basic Concept and Simple Examples

Basic Concept and Simple Examples

The name "equipartition" means "equal division," as derived from the Latin equi from the antecedent, æquus ("equal or even"), and partition from the antecedent, partitionem ("division, portion"). The original concept of equipartition was that the total kinetic energy of a system is shared equally among all of its independent parts, on the average, once the system has reached thermal equilibrium. Equipartition also makes quantitative predictions for these energies. For example, it predicts that every atom of a noble gas, in thermal equilibrium at temperature T, has an average translational kinetic energy of (3/2)k_BT, where k_B is the Boltzmann constant. As a consequence, since kinetic energy is equal to 1/2(mass)(velocity)2, the heavier atoms of xenon have a lower average speed than do the lighter atoms of helium at the same temperature. Figure 2 shows the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution for the speeds of the atoms in four noble gases.

In this example, the key point is that the kinetic energy is quadratic in the velocity. The equipartition theorem shows that in thermal equilibrium, any degree of freedom (such as a component of the position or velocity of a particle) which appears only quadratically in the energy has an average energy of 1⁄₂k_BT and therefore contributes 1⁄₂k_B to the system's heat capacity. This has many applications.