at temperature T, each degree of freedom contributes energy 1 kT to the average 2 energy of a molecule. Here a degree of freedom is an independent part of the energy of a molecule. For example, the motion of the CM of the molecule is described by 2 2 2 KCM = 1 m(vx + v y + vz ) , 2 which has three independent parts for the motion in the x, y, or z directions. These represent three degrees of freedom. To be able to count the degrees of freedom we must make a model of the molecule…
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