written by Wolfgang Christian, Trisha Salagaram, and Nithaya Chetty

The Microcanonical Entropy model considers an isolated system consisting of N identical, non-interacting quantum particles with energy E.  We wish to determine the entropy of the system S(N,E).  For fixed total energy E, we compute the entropy by considering a system of N distinguishable particles to be composed of a subsystem of (N - 1) particles and a subsystem of 1 particle. The model displays the entropy S(N,E) and the computation time as users vary the number of particles N and the total energy E.  This model is a supplemental simulation for the article "Enhancing the understanding of entropy through computation" in the American Journal of Physics 79(11), 1127-1132 (2011).

The Microcanonical Entropy model was developed by Wolfgang Christian, Trisha Salagaram, and Nithaya Chetty using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the  ejs_stp_MicrocanonicalEntropy.jar file will run the program if Java is installed.

• Download ejs_stp_MicrocanonicalEntropy.jar - 1967kb Java Archive File

Last Modified June 10, 2014

This file has previous versions.

The source code zip archive contains an EJS-XML representation of the Microcanonical Entropy Model.   Unzip this archive in your EJS workspace to compile and run this model using EJS.

• Download ejs_stp_MicrocanonicalEntropy.zip - 376kb Compressed File

Last Modified August 8, 2011