Physics 253: Problem Set 1 (due Friday Sept 14 at start of class)

Problem 1: Pressure as a function of altitude. Assume that the terrestrial atmosphere is a mixture of ideal gases. According to the law of partial pressures, the total pressure of a mixture of ideal gases is simply the sum of the pressures of each individual component: e.g. P = Pi with Pi = N i k B T /V and (a) Show that a mixture of ideal gases satisfies the ideal gas law. (b) Consider a horizontal slab of air whose thickness is dh and area is A. If this slab is at rest, the pressure holding it up from below must balance both the pressure from above and the weight of the slab. Use this fact to find an expression for dP/dh, the variation of pressure with altitude, in terms of the density of the air . (c) Use the ideal gas law to show that P =
N i=1

N i the number of molecules of the ith component.

k BT . M av

(with M av the average mass of an air molecule) (d) Assuming that the atmosphere is isothermal, find the pressure as a function of altitude (you will need to derive and solve an ordinary differential equation that determines the density as a function of height; let P = Po at h=0). (e) Given that air is 78.08% N2, 20.95% O2, 0.93% Ar and 0.04% CO2 (ignoring other minor components), find the altitude at which the pressure drops by 50% (you can assume that the temperature is 20oC). Problem 2: Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution. In class we showed that molecules in a gas should a distribution of speeds following P(v) = Av e . (a) Calculate the constants A and B from normalization and equipartition. (b) Calculate the average speed v and the most probable speed v P of the gas particles. You may find the following integrals useful:

2 Bv 2

x
0

2 ax 2

dx =

4a

, 3/2

x
0

4 ax 2

3 dx = 5 / 2 and 8a

x 3eax

dx =

1 . 2a 2

Problem 3: Critical temperature, pressure and number density of a van der Walls fluid. The critical point satisfies the following two conditions:

inspection of the isotherms for the VdW equation)

2 P P = 0 and 2 = 0 . (e.g. it is an inflection point--this can be seen from V T V T

Nk B T aN 2 Using the Van der Walls equation of state: P = obtain at fixed N V bN V 2 (a) the critical temperature Tc, the critical pressure Pc and the critical volume Vc

(b) show that if the VdW equation of state is expressed in terms of the rescaled variables T = T /Tc , P = P / Pc and V = V /Vc the constants a and b disappear from the equation (this means that different fluids should collapse onto the same curve when plotted in terms of the rescaled thermodynamic variables: this datacollapse behavior is observed experimentally and is not just a feature of the VdW equation of state) (c) What is the value of the quantity

(note that experimental values of this quantity for H20, CO2 and He are respectively 0.227, 0.274 and 0.305: the VdW Eq-of-State does not agree at a quantitative level with the behavior of real fluids although it is a very good qualitative model) Problem 4: Kinetic Theory of Photons. Remarkably, the kinetic theory of gases can be extended to a photon gas. You need to know only three facts from relativity and quantum mechanics! Fact 1: the momentum of a photon is: p = h /c ( photon frequency and h is Planck's constant). Fact 2: the energy of a photon is h . Fact 3: photons travel at c, the speed of light. While photons all travel at speed c, they can have a range of different frequencies. In particular, the (average) number of photons in the frequency range to + d is denoted by N (, T)d . (a) Follow the steps from the kinetic theory derivation to show that the momentum change per unit time/per unit area a for photon in the frequency range to + d striking the surface over the angular range to + d and

PcVc ? k B Tc

to + d is:

(b) Integrate the expression for part (a) over all frequencies and collision trajectories to show PV = 1 U . (Note that U(T) = 3

h N ( )d V

1 2

cos 2 sin dd .
0

hN (,T)d ).

Do not use the argument presented by Finn in section 8.5.