Microstate (thermodynamics)
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In thermodynamics, a microstate describes a specific detailed microscopic configuration of a system.
In contrast, the macrostate of a system refers to its macroscopic bulk properties such as its temperature and pressure.
Large numbers of distinct microstates can all have the same macroscopic appearance, and thus a macrostate can be regarded as a simplified description of a large set of possible microstates. The entropy of a macrostate can be defined in terms of the size of its set of microstates, and vice versa.
See also
- phase
- degrees of freedom
- quantum physics
- ergodic hypothesis
- statistical mechanics
- statistical ensemble
External links
- Some illustrations of microstates vs. macrostates (http://theory.ph.man.ac.uk/~judith/stat_therm/node57.html)